The Thin Line
by rahleeyah
Summary: AU (sort of). They say there's a thin line between love and hate. Harry Pearce is about to learn just how thin that line can be when one of his officers inadvertently brings a newcomer onto the Grid in the form of Harry's estranged wife. Will working together on one last operation patch up the holes in their relationship, or is it already too late? Now complete.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Welp, here we go again! I'm playing around a bit with the timeline here, but it's my story, and I'll do what I like. I hope you all will forgive me.**

* * *

It began rather simply. Beth Bailey, who had been industriously scrubbing her hands clean of the blood and refuse of the last ten years spent working as essentially no more than a mercenary in the darkest corners of the world, was following up on a lead. She'd been working as a member of Section D for nearly two years now, and had come to find her feet in the murky world of counterterrorism. Some days were dull as ditchwater, some days were harrowing, and some days, well, some days were just plain confusing. It began on one of the confusing days.

Dimitri had brought it up in the morning meeting. He had recently been elevated to the post of Section Chief, despite his lack of experience; they were all of them new, and all of them still quietly reeling in the aftermath of Lucas North's spectacular implosion the year before. Without Lucas, they were left badly in need of guidance, and Dimitri had stepped up, taking on more responsibility, and, under Harry's watchful eye, leading them all through the chaos that ensued. He was a nice young man, Dimitri – perhaps a bit _too_ nice at times, Beth thought – and he led the team well. His years spent in the SBS had given him a strength of character as well as of body, and they were all finding him a perfectly capable leader.

On that particular day, in that particular meeting, the subject at hand was a group of religious zealots who had taken up residence in a small private park outside Newbury. What made this particular group of interest to Section D was not just their teachings, archaic and slightly horrifying as they were, but their _methods._ Apparently, according to Dimitri – whose presentation was backed up by an impressive array of satellite photographs courtesy of Tariq's intrepid snooping – the leader of this particular group was…an odd duck. In the center of the park they had erected a tall, stone column, held together presumably by faith and righteous indignation rather than any sort of sound masonry. Their leader, a man whose name no one seemed to know as yet, had taken up residence atop the pillar. According to Dimitri, he hadn't come down once in the nearly three weeks since surveillance had begun on the site. His followers seemed to view him as something rather like a living saint, his endurance despite the exposure to the elements serving as testament to his faith and holiness.

Beth thought this was all a load of bollocks, and she was more than happy to leave the man standing on his misshapen pile of rocks, shouting at the clouds until he died of thirst, but Dimitri, and Harry as well, seemed to have other ideas.

For all intents and purposes, the words this oddball spewed at his followers seemed to be rooted in the Christian tradition, though presented in a rather appalling way that Beth had never encountered before. His verbal diarrhea had, in recent days, become rather militaristic, and it was this that concerned Dimitri. One lone nut job standing on a pillar in the middle of a forest was not cause for alarm on his own, but the thought of him sending thirty or so absolutely bonkers armed followers out into the world to wreak God only knew what sort of havoc was troubling.

"We need to find out more about who he is, and what his intentions are," Dimitri had said.

And that was how Beth found herself embroiled in the single most embarrassing moment of her professional career to date.

It was decided that it was too risky to send an agent into the park just then; the group was still relatively small, tight-nit and desperately suspicious of strangers. Her team was tasked with gathering information, as much as they could, and to that end Beth corralled one of their overworked and underpaid analysts into scouring the internet, looking for some sort of connection between this particular band of intrepid fanatics (the Newbury Nutters, Tariq called them when Harry wasn't around) and…well, anything really.

The analyst's name was Howard, and he was himself rather unusual, to Beth's mind. He was quiet and withdrawn, and had a tendency to snort when he laughed, like a pig snuffling around for mushrooms. But he had done his job; he told Beth that it appeared that Mr. Head Nutter ( _damn Tariq, that name's going to stick now)_ was modeling his peculiar behavior on a small group of early Christians called _stylites._ Back in the days, he explained, reading from a journal article on the subject he'd found, ascetic men with wild eyes and wild hair would build themselves a pillar and live atop it, some of them for years at a time, preaching the gospel of Christ to groups of the devout who gathered at their feet. Beth wasn't sure who had it worse; her nutter, who would soon found himself faced with the reality of Britain in winter, or those old sods who had been forced to grapple with the reality of living thus exposed in a desert. It made very little sense to her, but she decided to track down the individual who'd written the article that Howard printed and handed off to her, his greasy fingers leaving trails on the paper.

The article had been written, as it happened, by an Oxford lecturer and acclaimed academic. If Beth had been slightly less perturbed by Howard's general slovenliness, or less confused by the idea of a man living for years on top of a pillar in the desert, or less determined to prove to Harry for once and for all that she was a brilliant agent, she might have done a bit more research into her academic before driving to Oxford. As it was, she simply ascertained that the lecturer in question had no criminal record and no connections to any sort of nefarious coalitions of angry old Oxonians hell bent on blowing Cambridge off the face of the planet. Thus assured that this particular academic was nothing more than that, a simple, quiet lady who lived alone with her two cats in a little flat near the university, Beth set off to arrange a meeting, and find out what she could about the men who had so inspired Mr. Head Nutter, and to determine whether or not he was any real threat.

The initial meeting went rather well, Beth thought; though she experienced a few cringe-worthy flashbacks to her own days at school, the lecturer was soft spoken and kind, and agreed to gather together such information as might prove useful to Beth. Of course, Beth lied through her teeth, presenting a fake police badge and saying not a word about the Newbury Nutters. After all, Harry hadn't exactly cleared bringing an expert on board, and Beth wasn't in the habit of giving out her real name and occupation to strangers.

The moment of Beth's complete and utter humiliation came during a briefing the following day, when Harry, like a bear with a sore head, was rumbling mutinously about the end of the world and demanding an update on their every open case. Beth, thinking that she had done quite well in finding someone to assist with the case of the Newbury Nutters, volunteered her latest discovery.

"According to our research, this man," she waved her hand vaguely at the image of the Head Nutter currently displayed on the screen behind Harry's head, "is copying, almost exactly, the work of a group of early Christian monks. I've set up a meeting with an expert in that field, and I'm hoping she'll be able to help us determine what his endgame is."

Harry nodded briefly, opened his mouth to speak, and was abruptly cut off by the buzzing sound of the small intercom nestled in the center of the table. His eyes narrowed, as if the intercom itself was a sentient being and could be dismayed by a single glance, but the device continued to buzz merrily away, untroubled at the prospect of having drawn the boss spook's ire. _Good for you,_ Beth thought glumly. _If he looked at me that way, I'd piss myself._

"Yes?" Harry said, having finally ceased his glaring and reached out to take the call.

"Sir Harry, I apologize for the interruption." The young man, presumably one of the security guards upstairs, sounded genuinely contrite; perhaps he had felt the force of Harry's legendary stare through the intercom device. "It's just that…well…Lady Pearce is here to see you, sir."

Beth, Dimitri, and Tariq, as one, dropped their gazes to the table and tried to pretend as if they had suddenly been rendered invisible. _Lady Pearce_? Beth wondered. _Is Harry married? Who would have thought?_ Certainly not Beth; Beth was all too aware that Harry was the first on the Grid every morning, the last to leave every night. He worked nearly every weekend, smiled infrequently, and had a tendency to scare people, Beth included. During the Lucas North debacle, Beth had been shocked, along with everyone else, to learn that Harry had a daughter; they had only discovered Catherine's existence when Lucas kidnapped her, and held her ransom, demanding that Harry deliver the Albany file to him in exchange for his daughter's life. Though Harry had managed to both save his daughter and keep state secrets out of that traitor's hands, he had also revealed, somewhat hesitantly, that he was unhappily divorced. _Is she still Lady Pearce, if they're not married any more?_ Beth wondered. She didn't think so. But if that were the case, then Harry had to be married to someone else, now, someone he never spoke about and presumably saw but rarely, given his nearly fanatical devotion to his work.

"One moment, please," Harry said gruffly, muting the intrepid security guard and turning the full force of his laser-like gaze on to Beth. She felt that gaze before she saw it; she raised her head, as if Harry possessed some sort of telekinesis, and had simply willed her to move regardless of her own personal desire to sink into the floor.

"Miss Bailey," he said, his voice icy and soft, deceptively low, deceptively calm. "Your expert, what's her name?"

"Evershed," Beth answered, perplexed. Why was Harry asking her _that_? Why keep his wife waiting just to glean such a small piece of intel from her? "Ruth Evershed," she continued, figuring she might as well give the poor woman's full name.

Harry sighed in a resigned sort of way, and reached for the intercom. "Right, send Lady Pearce down, please. She knows the way."

 _Does she now?_ Beth wondered. She'd been working for MI-5 for two years now, and had seen neither hide nor hair of the mysterious Lady Pearce. Did Harry sneak her in late at night after everyone had gone?

"Miss Bailey," Harry was still speaking in that voice that sent chills up and down Beth's spine, so cold and so restrainedly furious was it. "I presume you ran the customary background checks on Ms. Evershed?"

Beth nodded, feeling, if possible, even more confused than before. _I don't see what he has to be so cross about_ , she thought indignantly. Dimitri and Tariq were no help at all; they were each studiously engaged in the exploration of their own fingertips.

"Tell me, Miss Bailey," _Christ,_ but Beth hated it when he called her that. It made her feel like she was back at school, about to be rapped on the knuckles by a smugly superior nun for sneaking cigarettes behind the kitchen. "In the course of your no doubt thorough investigation did it ever come to your attention-" here he paused, as something outside the meeting room caught his eye. Beth turned and saw a petite, dark-haired woman stepping through the pods and onto the Grid. The woman glanced Harry's way, and he lifted his hand and gestured for her to join them in the meeting room. Beth turned back to him, her face white as a sheet, fear rising in her gut. _Oh God, he's going to murder me._ "Did it ever once come to your attention," he continued through gritted teeth, "that Ruth Evershed is my bloody wife?"


	2. Chapter 2

Beth was absolutely horrified as she watched the door to the meeting room slide open. Howard had done his research, or at least he _told_ Beth that he had done, and yet no word of Ruth's marriage to Harry had reached her. It was such a monumental omission, and Beth found she couldn't quite wrap her mind around it. When they met the day before, Ruth Evershed had been kind and soft-spoken, dressed like some sort of modern day bohemian in her long flowy skirt and her chunky boots. The image of that woman, sitting in her cluttered office surrounded by books and papers and knickknacks of all sorts just didn't fit with Beth's idea of the sort of woman who would be married to Harry. The sort of woman, she supposed, who could put with his somewhat grumpy nature, his tendency to shout, his demand for absolutely unwavering devotion would have to be a formidable woman indeed, not a bashful, bookish lecturer. She watched, somewhat apprehensively, as Ruth slipped through the door and closed it carefully behind her, as natural as breathing. _Could this woman really be married to Harry?_ Beth couldn't help but ask herself. It just didn't make any sense.

As she watched, Ruth and Harry were considering one another, wary as gunslingers in an old western film. There was more going on here, Beth realized with a sudden piercing clarity. This was no happy union, but Beth desperately did not want to find herself embroiled in the midst of Harry's marital disputes. _I'm going to string Howard up by his toes,_ she thought morosely.

"Hello, Harry," Ruth said. Her voice was soft and warm; Beth quite liked the sound of it. Though she dressed a bit oddly and had spent a full twenty minutes waxing lyrical about some of the lesser known practices of early Christians, Ruth had a sort of comforting way about her that Beth couldn't help but find endearing. But now, as Beth watched, she saw something she had not seen before; there was a sorrow in the depths of Ruth Evershed's brilliant eyes, something troubling and profound, something she could not hide. It seemed that Ruth was one of those people who wore their hearts on their sleeves, and from where Beth was sitting, she could clearly see that Ruth's heart was in a sorry state.

"Ruth," Harry said. It was strange; where Ruth was kind but sad, Harry had spoken in a voice that seemed very nearly strangled with some sort of emotion Beth could not name. Tension lay thick on the ground between the pair of them; something murky and awful lurked in the shadows here, and Beth was cursing herself for being the one to bring it into the light.

Harry cleared his throat.

"You're looking well," he said politely.

"You look exhausted," Ruth responded. Her tone was neither playful nor cutting; she seemed genuinely concerned for him. For his part, Harry was clearly not in the mood to be having that particular conversation in front of his team.

"I'm sorry for turning up unannounced," Ruth said when it became clear that Harry had no response for her. She spared the team a sheepish look, as if she'd only just realized they were there, and her eyes lingered for a moment on Beth. It seemed to Beth that she saw the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of Ruth's full lips, but then her gaze was drawn back to Harry, and any mirth she might have felt at the situation faded quickly from view.

"I had a visit from your officer," she explained, gesturing towards Beth, "and I thought it would save you all some time if I just came down here. I hope I haven't overstepped."

 _How the bloody hell did she know?_ Beth wondered. Before this moment, she had thought that she had done quite well in concealing her real reasons for visiting Oxford, but apparently, she had not done well enough.

"I should have known you'd realize what was happening," Harry said ruefully.

 _This is a nightmare,_ Beth thought churlishly. It was as if she and Tariq and Dimitri had ceased to exist altogether, so complete was the focus with which Harry and Ruth were gazing at one another. Why was it, she asked herself, that Harry had allowed his wife, a civilian, onto the Grid, into the meeting room, and was behaving as if nothing were amiss? A million questions swirled through her mind, but she had only recently reached a place of what she thought was mutual understanding with Harry, and she was hesitant to push his buttons now. She would have to watch, and wait, and be a good little spook, much as this whole situation galled her.

* * *

"Why don't you have a seat, and we'll bring you up to speed?"

Harry was rather impressed with himself and the fairly even tone he'd managed to take with Ruth so far. Never once had it occurred to him that she would just come swanning back onto the Grid one day, out of the blue, and he was utterly unprepared for the torrent of memories that engulfed him the moment he saw her step through the pods. This was _right_ , this was where she belonged. Here, with him, working together to right the wrongs of the world and going home together at the end of a long day. Or at least, that's how it had been. Back when they were still in love, when he could fall asleep every night wrapped around her, safe in the knowledge that no matter what happened, Ruth would always be there with him, beside him, holding him up, guiding him through. He had never told her, in all the years they'd known one another, how much he relied on her gentle wisdom; he always assumed she knew. It was no easy thing for a man like Harry to confess that he sometimes needed help, sometimes needed that steady voice of calm reason to battle the passions of his heart, and so he had not spoken the words, and Ruth had left him, for that and many other reasons.

He knew he would have to explain to the team who Ruth was, why he was allowing her to join in their meeting, why he wasn't calling security this instant to come and round her up. He would have to talk, and talk, and all the while he would have to find a way to keep the fractured pieces of his heart from piercing through his skin to show his torn and tattered soul. As he pondered this he studied the familiar lines and curves of her, watched her ease herself carefully into a chair, tried to ignore the pang of longing that filled him when he realized that she had, deliberately or otherwise, chosen the chair at his right hand, the one that had for so long been reserved just for her. _Get a grip,_ he told himself, trying valiantly to bury his emotions, and assume the mantle of boss spook once more. He took his seat, staunchly refusing to look at Ruth, and began.

"Right. Beth, Dimitri, Tariq," he gestured to them each in turn, "this is Lady-"

"A little less of the 'Lady', please," Ruth corrected him gently. For a fraction of a second he saw a smile dance around the corner of her luminous eyes, but then it was gone, and that sorrow, that sadness that he hated so desperately had returned. "Plain 'Ruth' is fine."

Harry nodded, though he wanted to say that it was _not_ fine, that, for now at least, she was still Lady Pearce, still a part of his world, his life, his heart. "As you wish. This is Ruth Evershed." That hurt him more than he was expecting, the fact that she no longer used his name. She was well and truly lost to him, and he knew it. "She is a retired intelligence analyst who worked in this Section for several years." He saw the glimmer of understanding in Beth's eyes; no doubt the girl had been wondering how a woman as lovely and kind and bonkers and brilliant as Ruth had stumbled into his path, and he had just answered that question neatly. "Surprised that didn't come up in your background check, Miss Bailey," he added, throwing a mutinous look at his young agent.

It was a fleeting gesture, quickly corrected, but he did not miss the way Ruth reached towards him, as if to rest her hand gently on his forearm, as if to soothe his ire the way she had so often done in the past. He registered the moment she realized that was no longer her place, no longer the relationship they had with one another, and snatched her hand back as if she'd been burned. And he saw, too, the way Beth's eyes followed Ruth's every movement. _This is going to be unbearable,_ he thought morosely. It was hard enough, just sitting beside her; knowing that they would have an audience all the while was intolerable to him.

"It isn't her fault, Harry," Ruth told him in that soft voice he loved so well. "I had Malcolm clean up my history, a bit."

 _Of course you did._

"How did you know? That I wasn't with the police, I mean?" This question came from Beth. She was an insightful girl, and always ready to pick apart any conundrum, curious and quick on her feet. To be honest, Harry rather liked her, though he did wonder, as he wondered about all his agents, when her number would be called, and she would be ripped away from them like every other bright shining star he'd seen extinguished in service to their country.

"You did wonderfully," Ruth assured her. _How very Ruth;_ yes, she was always the one to praise the junior agents, always treated them gently. When they ran amuck, it was Ruth they turned to for help, for comfort. She was good that way, was Ruth; she shouldered everyone else's burdens easily, but found her own too great to bear.

"You don't carry yourself like a police officer, that's all. And it's not exactly common, for police to come looking for help dealing with religious extremists. I had a hunch, and it turns out, this time I was right."

 _You are always right,_ Harry thought sadly.

 _Christ,_ but he hated this. It was easy when she wasn't near, to push aside the feelings he had for her, the pain of losing her, the endless swirling tide of loneliness he felt when he returned home to the house they had once shared and found no one there to greet him. He knew all too well the part he had played in their falling out, but he was appalled by how deeply he'd allowed the prospect of their impending divorce to affect him. He was supposed to be better at this, at distancing himself from his emotions, at getting on with his life; after all, this wasn't the first time he'd trod down this particular path. Jane had been lost to him as well, and the children with her. Perhaps he should have handled the loss better, the second time around, but he found himself just as prone to overworking and overdrinking as he had been the first time. Ruth had been everything to him once, had been a part of his very soul, and now she had been rendered hardly more than a stranger. She was right; he _was_ exhausted, but only because he'd spent the last two years trying to remember how to sleep without her.

"Tariq," Harry said gruffly. "Why don't you tell Ruth what we know so far?"

The young man hesitated, his eyes flicking uncertainly back and forth between them. _Oh, for God's sake._ "Ruth retains a clearance level sufficient for this operation. Please, get on with it."

Though she did not voice it, Harry could almost hear the rebuke Ruth longed to deliver. Before everything went tits up and he found himself lost at sea without a rudder, she was forever telling him to be more supportive, to listen to his agents rather than barking orders. No doubt she disapproved of the tone he'd taken just then, but it was his bloody team, and he thought he would lead it however he chose. Though, to be honest, he was a bit ashamed of the way he had dealt with them in the past; he had perhaps been a bit more harsh than was necessary, but without her by his side he found that he had little patience for other people's feelings

Tariq did a masterful job of summing up the situation with the Newbury Nutters (Tariq thought that Harry hadn't heard him using that particular moniker around the water cooler, but he had and, to be quite honest, he rather liked it). Ruth absorbed it all like a sponge, pulling a little notebook from her battered handbag and scribbling notes all the while, a lock of hair falling over the side of her cheek and obscuring Harry's view of her face. He longed to reach out and brush it back, to feel the warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips, but he chided himself for having such thoughts. Those days were over and done.

When Tariq was finished, Harry cleared his throat, and gave his marching orders. "Right, Beth, I need to you to step up our investigation into who owns the park, and how these people got there. Bring me everything you can find. Dimitri, I need you to work on implementing better surveillance, we need to be able to hear everything they're saying. Ruth," here he stopped dead, choked for a moment at the thought of once more sending her out of this room with tasks to complete, the thought of her barging into his office with that triumphant grin upon her face. _Those days are long gone, old man._ "Ruth, I need you to compile everything related to these…these…"

"Stylites," she supplied helpfully. She did not meet his gaze when she spoke; perhaps it was just as difficult for her as it was for him, retracing the steps that had brought them together in the first place, knowing how it all played out in the end.

"Yes, thank you. Tell us what their message was, how it corresponds to what our man is saying. I want to know if he's a real threat."

"Harry," she sighed, and once more it seemed to him that they were the only two people in the room, caught in a riptide of remorse and misunderstanding. "I do have a job, you know. I can't very well drop everything-"

"It's Tuesday," Harry cut her off before he could stop himself. "You don't teach on Tuesday." She never taught on Tuesdays, and Harry never forgot a single word she ever spoke to him, regardless of what she thought of his listening skills. He watched her face, watched the way she seemed to consider him; he could see in her eyes that she knew he was right, and that she hated herself for wanting to once more embroil herself in this world. As ever, she was trying to free herself, and he was trying to reel her back in.

This dance was so familiar to him, this push and pull, and yet so different, now that they had fallen together and fallen apart. Before they'd wed, when everything was innuendo and barely disguised lust, they had played their game of cat and mouse, she shy and diffident, he brash and unabashedly pursuing her. He had won that battle, had found a way to bring her into his bed and into his heart, but she had won the war, and left him cold and bereft in her absence.

Her shoulders drooped infinitesimally. "All right," she said. "I can give you one day."

And though he hated himself for his weakness, Harry was grateful for it.


	3. Chapter 3

From the moment she boarded the train in Oxford that morning, Ruth had been asking herself why she decided to come back to Thames House. It would have been easy enough, she knew, to keep her nose out of it, to pretend to be completely oblivious as to the real nature of her meeting with the supposed police detective. The girl had been polite enough, and given the fact that her eyes were wide as dinner plates when Ruth stepped into the meeting room, Ruth was fairly certain that poor Beth had no idea what sort of trouble she'd stirred up. Given the way Harry had reacted, upon seeing her again, Ruth was equally certain that he hadn't authorized sending his agent into her office like that. She wasn't supposed to be here, and she knew it. Ruth was kicking herself now, for walking once more into this nest of vipers, for forcing herself to face him once again, for giving into his request for aid. _What the bloody hell were you thinking?_ She asked herself. It was a fruitless endeavor; she already knew the answer to that question.

She had come in part because she was full to bursting with questions; it was such a bizarre area of interest for Harry and his team to be looking into, and part of her was desperately curious as to what sort of events had precipitated Beth's asking for her expertise in the first place. That curiosity had driven her, had directed her towards London, towards Harry, set her careening wildly down a road she had promised herself long ago she would never trod again. Her obsessive need to piece together any puzzle was precisely what had set her in Harry's path all those years before, and she knew it. Digging around where she wasn't invited had caused her no end of grief; she was much happier now, with a simpler, more elegant sort of existence.

Or so she told herself.

Truth be told, she was a bit…bored. Her students were lovely, her life was quiet, and not a single one of the friends she'd made in the last two years at Oxford had died bloody and screaming. She had a routine that rarely altered, and she kept normal working hours. She no longer carried the weight of the world upon her shoulders. It was… _nice_. It was something she could understand. The work didn't give her nightmares, and when she rang her mother once a week she could tell the truth about what she'd been up to.

But when night fell, when her little moggies had curled up and gone to sleep and she had drunk the one glass of wine she allowed herself, when she slipped beneath her duvet and stared up at the ceiling of her little flat, she could not hide from the sense that it was all wrong. She wasn't sure that what she did made all that much difference, in the end; her students were bright and for the most part determined, and she wasn't convinced they really needed her guidance. There was no choice she could make, now, that would have any sort of far-reaching consequences for the world at large. And there was no one there waiting for her when she returned from work, no warm body lying next to hers in the bed that felt so strange and so large compared to the one she had shared with Harry.

 _Oh Harry._

Without even realizing what she was doing, Ruth raised her gaze from the report she was working on, and, as always, her eyes found their way to Harry's office. They had located an empty work station for her, and though its placement varied somewhat from the one that had been hers before, she found she still had a clear view of the man himself, sitting at his desk, arguing with someone on the telephone. It had been months since she'd last seen him, during a rather tense meeting where they'd sat down with their solicitors. Harry had rushed out partway through the meeting, giving no explanation save for the look he directed at Ruth, the one that told her all too plainly that he had been called in to once more save the world. On that day, she had dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and quietly recommended to the solicitors that they avoid the tube on their journey home. At the time, she had felt a pang of worry, seeing how tired he looked, seeing his bloodshot eyes and his rather defeated posture. And now, now he looked no better; she knew him so well, and she saw what his team perhaps did not. With one look she had determined that he was both drinking too much and sleeping too little, and as she watched him now, she found that her worry for him was only matched by the guilt she felt, knowing that it was losing her that troubled him so.

Harry ended his phone call and glanced her way, as if he could feel her eyes upon him; she quickly returned her attention the report at hand, feeling a little wave of bitter anger rising up amongst the grief and the guilt. _Damn him_ , she thought. It was his fault she'd left, and if he was torturing himself over it, so be it. It wouldn't change things between them.

 _I never should have come here._

It was strange, being back on the Grid. All of her friends were gone; Tom, Zoe, Danny, Sam, Fiona, Colin, Zaf, Adam, Jo, Malcolm, even Ros. The analysts she'd known, the junior techies, even the girl in Registry who always stuttered and dropped things whenever she came round; there was no one left she remembered, save Harry. This place had been her home, once. She had _belonged_ here. Though the bones of the Grid remained unchanged, she keenly felt the absence of the people who had made this place her refuge. Harry's current team seemed nice enough, but it was all so different now. She noticed that he was a bit short with them, a bit more curt than he had been before. Had she taken his smile with her when she left?

In the midst of this reverie, Beth came to her, approaching on quiet feet.

"How are you getting on?" the girl asked her in a soft voice. That was something else that had changed, in the years since Ruth had last been here; everyone on the Grid spoke in quiet voices, and the jocularity that had existed before was now nowhere to be found.

"I think I'm nearly done. I don't know how much help I'll be; your man is preaching a very different ideology to the men he's trying to emulate."

Beth perched on the side of her desk, her eyes alight with curiosity. That was perhaps their greatest fault, as spies; the need to know, the need to help. _Watch yourself,_ Ruth thought ruefully, though she did not speak the words aloud. _One day you'll ask a question, and the answer will burn you alive._ Ruth knew all too well the truth of that. This place had chewed her up and spat her out, left her reeling and so much harder, so much sadder than she had been before. It had done much the same to Harry.

"How so?" Beth's question put an end to her self-pity, and Ruth once more assumed the role of the teacher, carefully guiding her apt pupil through the murky problem that faced them.

"Well, first you have to understand, there was no order of stylites, no school for them. A man might go and sit at the feet of one of these hermits, and choose to take up their example, but they weren't exactly suggesting that every Christian should follow the practice. They were ascetics, people who believed that by denying themselves worldly pleasures, they would achieve salvation for their souls." Here Ruth stopped, and offered the girl a small, sad smile. She could see already that Beth had identified the main difference between their nutter, and the men who had gone before him.

"As you no doubt have realized, your man here is looking to build himself a following, and I think the ancient ascetics would have had a thing or two to say about that kind of pride. These men actively sought to remove themselves from the world and the people who inhabit it; they weren't interested in proselytizing."

"And our man is doing the opposite," Beth observed. "Why the pillar, then?"

Ruth shrugged. "As a dramatic device, it's rather a good one. I suppose that's all it is to him, a way to draw more attention to himself. His words have no basis in the tradition of the stylites. I'm not sure how much help I'll be."

On the other side of the Grid, Dimitri had found something, and he interrupted their discussion with a cry of "Oy! Bailey!"

Beth sighed and heaved herself off the desk. For a moment Ruth dithered, uncertain as to whether or not she should go and see what all the fuss was about. After all, she'd done what she came here to do, and if she had any sense, she'd leave now, before she became fully embroiled in the operation. It wasn't her place any more, to guide this team, to provide Harry with the information he needed to stop some unspeakable atrocity. She wasn't a member of this team, and this was not her home, anymore.

Her rational mind lost that battle, however, as she found herself falling into step behind Beth.

"What have you got?" Beth asked, leaning over Dimitri's shoulder to peer at the monitor on which he had been reviewing their surveillance of the group in the park. Ruth hovered in the background, wringing her hands as she argued with herself about the merits of staying versus leaving immediately.

"Tariq's facial recognition finally got a hit. This man here," he froze the tape he'd been watching, and pointed to one rather normal looking fellow standing at the base of the nutter's pillar, "is Greg Lawson. He owns the park."

Dimitri continued to talk, but Ruth was distracted by the ringing of her mobile. She fished it from her pocket and withdrew a little way to take the call. And as she did, she felt that familiar prickling sensation on the back of her neck. She turned her head, and found Harry watching her like a hawk from the confines of his office, that same brooding, inscrutable expression on his face. _Why am I still here?_ She wondered.

With a sigh, she looked away from him, and answered the call. "Hello?"

"Ruth? It's Mary."

 _Oh, please, not now._ The sudden intrusion of her normal, mundane life into the chaotic uncertainty of the Grid was the last thing she needed. She and Mary were fast friends; Mary taught courses on the history of Islam, and her office was right across the hall from Ruth's. They often had lunch together on Tuesdays, and in her hasty departure from Oxford Ruth had forgotten to concoct an excuse for her trip to London. It had been a long time, since Ruth had operated under any sort of legend, and she feared she was a bit rusty. She had no idea how she would explain herself, and the thought of once more becoming embroiled in a string of ever more elaborate lies was galling.

"What is it?" she asked tersely. Ruth immediately regretted taking that tone with Mary, who was a kind-hearted sort and didn't deserve to be dealt with so brusquely, but she couldn't help it. Being back here, facing Harry, sitting on the Grid, all of it had left a sour taste in the back of her mouth.

"Some man's just been in looking for you, and I thought you ought to know about it."

 _Isn't that odd?_ Ruth thought. She had no appointments scheduled for today."Man? What man?"

Unbeknownst to Ruth, Harry had emerged from his office, and he stepped into her line of sight as she spoke, his brow furrowing at her words. She turned away from him, trying to focus on Mary, and not the maelstrom of emotions that capsized her every time Harry drew near.

"He seemed nice enough, nice suit, clean cut. No ring," Mary added cheekily. Ruth fought the urge to stamp her foot in frustration; she was once more regretting the fact that she'd told Mary about her impending divorce. Her intrepid friend had taken the news as license to try to set Ruth up with every man she knew, regardless of Ruth's feelings on the matter.

"He said his name was Greg Lawson."

Ruth's heart stuttered in her chest. "Mary, I'm going to have to call you back," she said, and promptly ended the call.

"Is everything all right?" Harry asked her in a low voice, a voice that was meant for her and her alone. And _damn him_ , but the sound of that voice still affected her the way it had done eight years before, when she was still young and naïve and falling more in love with him by the day.

"I think we have a problem, Harry," Ruth answered.


	4. Chapter 4

With a wave of his hand, Harry marshaled his troops, and the lot of them went marching off to the meeting room. Once inside, they slipped into their chairs, Ruth pale faced and quiet as a wraith as she took her customary seat beside him. It was dangerous, he knew, to be lulled into a false sense of security by the familiarity of it all. Ruth had _left_ , and though she sat at his right hand now, he knew that soon she would be gone again, and if he let himself be too swayed by the intoxicating sensation of her proximity, her leaving would be doubly hard to bear. She had spurned him, had turned her back on the life they had built together, had forged a new path for herself, one that had diverged from his own two years before. No matter how great the crisis at hand, when the dust settled, she would leave, for she was nothing if not set in her ways, his Ruth.

So it was that he cleared his throat, and proceeded with the meeting, all the while trying to ignore the siren song of his wife, folded neatly into the seat beside him, close enough to warm him with her sheer personal radiance.

"Right, Greg Lawson. What do we know about him?"

It was Dimitri who answered him. "Not much, at the moment. He made it big a few years back, sold a sizeable chuck of his family's land to a real estate developer and was paid handsomely for it. Since then, he's not done much of anything. A few charity events here and there, but he isn't throwing his wealth about. We're still looking for more information."

"What the bloody hell was he doing in Oxford today?" Harry demanded. That question was at the forefront of his mind; how, _why_ had this man gone looking for Ruth? Was she safe? There was nothing that frightened Harry more than the thought of Ruth being in danger, beyond his protection, except perhaps the thought of _Catherine_ being in danger. All he wanted, all he had ever wanted, was to protect his girls, to keep them safe from harm.

"I imagine he was there for the same reason I went there yesterday," Beth said slowly. "We did our homework, and Ruth's research in this area is the most recent work anyone's done on stylites in decades. If Mr. Lawson wanted information about their practices, she's the logical choice."

"How involved is Lawson in what's going on at the park?" Harry asked.

Tariq answered him, this time. _This lot could put on a traveling production,_ Harry thought glumly. "They meet twice a day, sunup and sundown. Most of the members of the group attend every meeting, but we've only clocked Lawson there a handful of times. He doesn't appear to be as…devout as the others."

"He's allowing them to use his property, though, and that makes him a suspect," Harry mused, rubbing a hand across his brow in weary resignation.

Beside him, Ruth shifted uncomfortably in her chair, twisting her hands together the way she always did when she was anxious. That was one of the many things Harry had always found so endearing, and so refreshing, about her; he always knew how she was feeling, with just one look at her face. When they first met, this had caused Harry no end of grief, as he wondered how she would ever survive in their world of grief and treachery. He was forever tempering his own responses, biting back the sharp retort that threatened to spill from his lips when he caught sight of her morose expression. From the beginning, he had tried his damnedest to bring a smile to her face, for when she smiled, his own heart was lighter for it. And she had surprised him, had showed him the steel hiding beneath that porcelain skin; he was so bloody _proud_ of her, proud of the spy she had become, proud when she stood beside him and took his name, proud that she had chosen _him,_ battered and grumpy and old as he was.

"I think I ought to go, Harry," she said quietly. He did not look at her, simply shuffled the pages of the dossier Tariq had assembled on their Nutters.

"That might be for the best," he agreed, absent-mindedly rifling through the detritus of intel before him. "Take Beth with you."

"And why would I do that?" Ruth asked him sharply, turning in her chair to stare at him in righteous indignation. Harry lifted his head, bemused by the sudden acidity of her tone.

"To set up obs," he explained slowly. The color rose in Ruth's cheeks as anger sparked to life in her glorious eyes.

"Excuse me?"

"We'll want cameras and mics in your office, at the very least, and a van outside your flat in case he comes round."

* * *

Ruth couldn't believe what she was hearing. Harry wanted to set up surveillance on her? The very thought turned her stomach. All she wanted was to go home, to curl up with her moggies, and forget this stupid, confusing day, forget the way Harry's eyes burned when he looked at her, forget the way her breath caught in her throat when he spoke to her, forget the anger and the grief and the sheer unbridled exhilaration of working on the Grid again. And Harry, damn him, wanted to spy on her!

"Harry, that's insane," she protested. "I won't consent to this. We don't even know if this man's dangerous."

Harry scowled at her, unmoved by her arguments. _Just like old times,_ she thought bitterly. He could be so bloody-minded, when he got an idea like this in his head, and it was clear to Ruth that he had given no thought to the horrific invasion of her privacy he'd just suggested. Or had he? Was he only considering what would be best for the operation, or was he trying to find a way to insinuate himself back into her life? Before their falling out, she fancied she knew him better than this, fancied that she could read him like her favorite book, his thoughts mapped out upon his face in a form of Braille that only her fingertips could read. Now, though, now she wasn't so sure.

"He's allowing these people to use his property, and they're planning to arm themselves to the teeth and go marching into London to further the kingdom of heaven. He's aiding and abetting religious terrorists and I will not permit you to meet him without proper backup."

"Will not permit?" Ruth repeated incredulously. She was well aware that her voice had risen several octaves and that to the assembled agents she had no doubt become the stereotypical shrilly shrieking harpy of a wife, but really, what gave him the right to _permit_ her to do anything? _I'm not your bloody analyst, and I'm not your bloody wife,_ she thought petulantly, but she did not voice that particular thought aloud.

"Ruth," Harry sighed, rubbing his fingertips across his brow again. _I know, you're tired of me, you want me gone, you just want to have your way. Some things never change, do they, Harry?_

"You can spy on whoever you like, Harry, but not _me._ Of all the jealous, petty, ridiculous things you've done-"

He cut her off mid-diatribe, and she couldn't help but pout, just a little at that. She had been just about to hit her stride, to unload on him all the bitter, wounded words she'd been saving up for him for the last two and a half years.

"All right," he said. "All right. Prove it, Ruth. Prove to me this man is not a threat." He was speaking in that _won't you just be reasonable, darling, and come back to bed_ tone of voice she remembered all too well from the days when they were happily wed. That voice had won her over, on more than one occasion, but it was not helping his cause in the slightest just now.

She glowered at him. "I have a job, Harry. I have a life. I don't work for you any more."

For just a moment, she could have sworn she saw him smile.

"You said you'd give me one day, Ruth. The day's not over yet," he told her with a sweet, triumphant sort of expression on his face.

He had a point there. There were still so many questions as yet unanswered, and it was barely two in the afternoon; there was time yet for her to continue the investigation into these nutters, and still catch the train back to Oxford. And he knew it, _damn him_ , knew that the thought of leaving this task undone would fester in the back of her mind, that she wouldn't know peace until she'd unearthed the answers.

"You insufferable bastard," she muttered. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Beth flinch at the words, and was sharply reminded that she and Harry were not in fact that only people in the room. _They'll be talking about this for weeks,_ she thought morosely.

"Stubborn mule," Harry answered.

And though she hated herself for it, Ruth couldn't help the rueful little smile that tugged at the corners of her lips when he said it. _Damn him._

* * *

Much, much later Harry caught sight of the clock, and groaned. He'd been face down in a pile of paperwork, fielding phone calls from the HS and the DG and a whole host of other acronyms, trying, as ever, to maintain an even keel despite the constant drudgery of having to explain his decisions to men who had never once worked in the field. He was of the firm belief that one should not be allowed to rise that far in life without getting one's hands dirty, without experiencing the reality behind the flowery speeches and dramatic gestures of modern politics. He rolled his shoulders; the left one pained him in cold weather, and with winter fast approaching he found it was bothering him more than usual. _Thanks for that, Tom,_ he thought.

As ever, his eyes sought Ruth out across the Grid. Beth had gone out around suppertime, and returned with an armload of sandwiches which she had distributed to the hungry team before returning to her work. Harry wasn't sure what Ruth was up to, or if she were even aware of quite how late it was. The last train to Oxford would be leaving in an hour or so, and he knew she'd want to be on it, though the thought of sending her out there, with no backup, with no idea of what their suspects were capable of, in the middle of the night, was untenable. There was a perfectly serviceable bed in the spare room of their house…his house… _the_ house, and he would feel much better if she stayed the night there, and returned to Oxford in the daylight. Ruth would hate the very idea, he knew, but her safety had to come before whatever personal quibbles they might be enduring at the moment.

At least, that's what he told himself.

Harry heaved himself out of his chair and made his way across the Grid, sending Beth, Dimitri, and Tariq home in short order. Ruth was wearing headphones and scribbling away on a notepad, and she took no notice of the team's departure, for which Harry was very grateful. If she were going to give him a bollocking for suggesting she come home with him, he would much prefer she do it without an audience.

"Ruth," he said softly, though he knew she could not hear him. He reached out, and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Ruth jumped as if she'd just been burned and spun around in her chair, eyes flashing for a moment before she registered that it was Harry who had touched her. Her face softened instantly; she looked tired, but not as irate as she had been in the meeting room when last they spoke.

"I'm sorry," she said as she removed her headphones. "I got caught up, I suppose. What is it?"

Harry leaned back against her borrowed desk, momentarily relieving the strain on his bum knee, and smiled down at her. He couldn't help it, that smile that came to him as he gazed on her; she was so lovely, even with a bit of ink smeared across her cheek. There was something contagious about Ruth's passion, about her need for answers, and Harry had always enjoyed these little conversations they used to share at the end of a long day, when the Grid belonged to them and they could simply be with each other without having to worry about propriety or the watchful stares of their coworkers.

* * *

"What were you working on?" Harry asked her in a warm, soft voice that threatened to make her insides go all gooey at the sound of it. Dimly Ruth recalled that she was supposed to be cross with him, but to be honest she had so enjoyed herself this afternoon that she was finding it difficult to maintain the momentum of that anger.

"A bit of translation," she said, waving her hand at the computer beside her. "Our man here likes to pepper his sermons with Greek and Latin, and I was trying to work it out."

"Oh?" For his part Harry seemed genuinely interested. She wished he weren't; she wished he would just leave her be. It was so much harder, to keep her distance from him, when he was rumpled and kind and offering her a listening ear. There was the faintest trace of stubble shadowing his jawline, and Ruth found herself rather suddenly recalling the only time she had ever seen him with a beard. Between their wedding and their honeymoon Harry had spent two weeks in County Down working with the local branch there as they tracked a group of Real IRA members who were cooking themselves up quite a big bomb. He'd been undercover, then, and when her new husband came home to her his beard had been in full swing. Once he'd been properly debriefed, they set off on their honeymoon, and Harry had staunchly refused to shave, saying it was the first time in nearly twenty years that he'd been allowed to grow a beard, and he wasn't about to get rid of it until he absolutely bloody had to. In every photo from the week they'd spent holed up together in a posh hotel room in Paris, Harry was sporting his salt-and-pepper beard, and though Ruth had fussed about it, she'd secretly found the look rather roguish and charming.

 _Stop it,_ she chided herself. _That's over and done._

Perhaps Harry had taken note of her little mental detour; he leaned towards her and murmured, "What's he been saying, then?"

Ruth was grateful for the distraction, and she turned her attention back to her notes, and away from her soon-to-be-ex-husband and his deliciously scruffy face.

"It's all nonsense. I mean, technically, he's trying to say things like _glory to the warriors_ and _death is a gift of mercy for the righteous,_ but his grammar's all wrong. It's as if he's using a cheap online translator. He's got no grasp of the language. Not that these nutters seem to mind."

It was time for her to leave, and she knew it. They had learned nothing of substance about Greg Lawson, and they had yet to identify the Head Nutter, as Tariq called him. Though Ruth knew it wasn't really an appropriate codename for the fellow, privately she quite liked the moniker.

"I'd best be getting on," she said, rising from her chair and casting about in search of her handbag. She found it, located just behind Harry's feet. He was leaning against her desk with his ankles crossed, effectively barring her access to her belongings, though she wasn't sure that he had done that on purpose. _Christ_ , but she hated this, hated being so suspicious of him.

"Ruth," he said softly. "It's after eleven. I'd rather you didn't take the train so late, on your own."

 _Oh no,_ she thought, dismayed as she checked the time on her computer. Her heart sank in her chest; _oh, Ruth, stupid, how could you let the time get away from you like that?_

"There's clean sheets on the guest bed," Harry continued.

The anger came back with a vengeance as Ruth stared at him in disbelief. Had he done this on purpose? Let her get distracted, waited until the Grid was dark, blocked her from getting to her handbag, all to force her to go home with him? Did he really think she'd consent to sleep in the spare room of her own bloody house? Well, technically, it wasn't her house any more, but still, the thought was disturbing.

"That's your plan then is it, Harry?" she said spitefully. "Why did you wait until now to speak to me? You knew I wanted to go home and before you say anything," she continued angrily, seeing the chagrin on his face as she spoke the word _home_ , "that house is not my home, any more. I want to go back to Oxford."

"It's the middle of the bloody night," he fired back. "And we still don't know anything of substance about Greg Lawson. What if he's waiting for you outside your flat? You have no idea what these people are capable of, Ruth, and frankly, you're showing a shocking disregard for your own safety after everything we've been through."

The words took her like a slap to the face; perhaps it was exhaustion, or just the strange sensation of wandering through a dream that had plagued her from the moment she first set foot on the Grid, but it was not until that moment that she allowed herself to really consider the potential danger that lurked in the air. How many of their friends had died? How many funerals had they sat through together, holding one another's hands? Catherine had nearly been killed by Lucas North, Ruth herself had been forced into exile, Harry had been shot (more than once). He was right, and she knew it.

Her shoulders slumped. "I will take Beth with me, in the morning," she said in a defeated sort of way. "But no surveillance inside my flat."

"I promise," he said earnestly.

"I'll sleep in the spare room."

"Of course."

Ruth sighed. "Take me home then, Harry."

He nodded and lurched to his feet, reaching behind him to retrieve her handbag and handing off to her without another word.


	5. Chapter 5

As Harry drove along, Ruth silent as the grave beside him, utterly still save for the continual twisting of her hands in her lap, he couldn't help but recall the last time they had stood together in their home, the last time he had seen her somewhere other than a solicitor's office. With each turn he took the memories came back to him, fresh as the reek from a festering wound, and he could no more hide from them than he could hide from the accusing stare of his wife in the passenger's seat.

* * *

It all came to a head the day after Ros's funeral. The last few weeks had been hell; since the bombing, he'd been scrambling around, fielding phone calls from irate politicians while trying to manage his demoralized team. He wasn't sleeping, he was barely eating, and even his whiskey had gone untouched, for every time he reached for it he was confronted by his wife, and her stern, disapproving expression. Ruth was cross with him, he knew. He hadn't been home much, and when he was more often than not they rowed. She thought he was shutting her out, and he couldn't find the words to tell her what was going on inside his head, and so the cycle continued.

Things hadn't been right between them for a while, and he knew it. He knew that if he asked Ruth, she'd say that their gradual implosion began the day Mani kidnapped them, the day Harry was thrown in the boot of a car and Ruth was snatched from their home, the day they both nearly lost their lives trying to save the world from the latest disaster. She thought he had lost faith in her, in himself, that he no longer confided in her as he had done. What she did not know, what she could not have known, was that for him, things had started to fall apart just a few days before, the day he took out the rubbish and the bag broke, and what he found strewn across the pavement shocked him to his core.

She did not know, because he had not told her. He had been waiting, for months now, for her to say something about it, but she didn't. And Harry, not knowing how to deal with this sudden, disturbing lack of communication between them, had let it fester. He had not asked, and she had not answered, and so they drifted further and further apart, each with their own secrets.

After the funeral, they had wandered off across the church grounds together, her cold little hand clasped tight in his own. It was in his mind to think that maybe now was their chance to set things to rights; maybe there, in that peaceful, quiet pasture, they could have made their confessions, one to the other. But Ruth had other ideas; she fished the file from her bag, and laid it all out for him, the truth of Blake's betrayal and the extent of Nightingale's machinations. As she spoke it occurred to Harry there was only one option available to him, only way to make Blake pay for the crimes he'd committed, the lives he'd taken. As the truth of what he was planning began to sink in he drifted further and further away from the woman standing by his side, thinking only that he would do what must be done, and shield her from the worst of it if he could.

Ruth had seen it in his eyes, he knew. She had seen the moment the shades came down, the moment he chose to keep his own confidences, and not hers. Perhaps that was what decided it for her. Perhaps seeing him drifting away, unwilling and unable to share with her the truth of his heart as he had so often done in the past, was the final straw for her.

All Harry knew was this; he made his excuses, and took a whirlwind trip to Scotland. When he came home late the next night, he found his wife in their bedroom, packing a bag.

"Ruth?" he asked all bemused as he leaned against the doorframe, weary and deeply troubled by the sight of her, the frantic energy of her movements as she threw her things into the bag, the incessant whining of the cats twining themselves around her ankles.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she said, refusing to meet his gaze. "I had hoped to be finished here before you got in. I'll only be a moment, and then you can get some sleep."

"Where are you going?" he asked her, straining to keep his voice low, to keep from shouting, to keep from taking her by the shoulders and shaking her, to keep from catching her face in his hands and kissing her until everything was all right again. He wanted to go back to the way things were before, before the rubbish day, before Mani, before Nightingale. When she was everything to him, as he was to her, and they kept no secrets from one another.

"I've been offered a job, in Oxford, and I'm going to take it. I have a friend there who said she can put me up for a week or two, while I'm looking for a flat. I'll ring you, about sending some removal men round to get the rest of my things." She said all this very matter-of-factly, as if they were discussing a situation on the Grid, she laying out all the intel for him to do with as he pleased.

"When did you apply for the job?" Harry demanded, feeling his anger rising even as the grief roared to a crescendo in his mind, a massive wave washing over him and leaving him unsteady on his feet.

"A month ago. When Ros died." Finally she'd finished with the bloody bag, and she heaved it onto her shoulder, turning to face him with tears sparkling in the depths of her brilliant eyes. "I can't do this any more, Harry," she said, her voice breaking just a little as she spoke his name.

 _A month._ She'd been planning to leave him for _a month,_ and she hadn't spoken a word about it. Harry couldn't focus on anything else, not the sorrow on her face or his own guilt at having pushed her to this point; all he could think was she had known for a month that she was going to leave him, and she had not told him. She had not given him the opportunity to protest, to try to win her back, to try to fix things between them; Ruth had given up and given in, and it appeared that Harry himself would have very little say in the matter.

"Why?" he asked, refusing to move from his post by the door, refusing to let her leave without an explanation of some sort.

"You could have _died_ that day, Harry. You ran off, with no back up, with no plan, even though I asked you not to, even though you weren't doing anyone any good there. You could have _died_ , and you went anyway, and you didn't even tell me you loved me before you left. Do you know what that was like for me, watching you put yourself in danger like that, refusing to listen to me? You haven't spoken to me properly in months, you don't trust me any more, after Mani-"

"What happened with Mani has no bearing on the way I feel about you!" he protested, but she shook her head.

"I told him where the uranium was, Harry. Where I thought it was, at least," she added bitterly. "I wasn't prepared to sacrifice you, even if it meant thousands, maybe millions people would die in your place. I couldn't do it, and you've treated me as if I'm made of glass ever since. I know you think I'm weak-"

Here he opened his mouth to speak, to shout that he knew better, knew she was strong, that she was as unmovable as a mountain, but the look of utter devastation on her face made his breath catch in his throat, and she barreled on, heedless.

"And maybe I am," she said, "because I can't keep doing this without you. I can't keep living this half-life with you, only speaking on the Grid, only touching when you roll over in your sleep. I need my husband, Harry. Where has he gone?"

 _I'm right here,_ he wanted to say. _I'm right here, where I've always been, waiting for you to come to me._ His anger would not be swayed by the frantic clamoring of his heart, however, and what he said next would haunt him, all the rest of his days.

"So you're just going to leave, then?" he spat. "You're going to run away, the way you always do."

"That's not fair, Harry," she said accusingly, the hurt written all over her face. If only they weren't having this conversation today, of all bloody days, things might have gone differently. If Harry hadn't buried Ros the day before, and murdered Nicholas Blake that afternoon, if he weren't still grieving for the loss of one of his most trusted agents, a woman who had understand the dark machinations of his heart, if only he weren't so bloody tired, perhaps he would have treated her more gently. Perhaps he would have confessed what he'd found on rubbish day, confess all the niggling doubts that had troubled his sleep ever since. Perhaps they would have spoken properly, and perhaps they would have gone to bed together, and spoken in the morning of the possibility of his retiring and moving to join her in Oxford. Their whole life seemed to be one _maybe, perhaps, almost_ after another.

What he actually said was this.

"And you think _this_ is fair? You were just going to do a runner in the night and let me come home to an empty house? Christ, Ruth it's like I don't even know you."

"Maybe you don't, Harry," she said. "I'll come by to pick up the cats at the weekend."

And with that she barreled past him, and he was so ashamed, so angry, so damn confused that he let her. He let her leave, and he remained, standing in the doorway to their bedroom, listening to the sound of her slamming the front door behind her. It was only after she had left that he realized she had removed her rings, and left them in the tray on his dresser with his cufflinks. He stared at that little tray, at the sparkling diamond of her engagement ring mocking him, for how long he couldn't say. All he knew was that eventually he turned away, and shuffled off down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he proceeded to drink more whiskey than was really wise, and passed out at the table.

True to her word, Ruth came back the next weekend to fetch her beloved moggies; Harry had been at Thames House, and he did not see her, though he did come home to find her house key shining brightly on the table. A few weeks after that, she arranged for the removal men to come and fetch her things, and Harry spent a miserable afternoon showing them what to take, and what to leave.

Life trundled on, but there was no joy in it for Harry. He did not speak to Ruth again until the night after the Albany affair. It was she who rang him that night, having just received a call from a nearly hysterical Catherine. Ruth did not berate him, or demand an explanation for his choices. She had spoken to him softly of the end of Lucas North, of the twisted plot that had nearly cost him his daughter. It did not go unnoticed by Harry that it was Ruth Catherine reached out to following that disaster, and not her mother; Catherine had been worried about her father, and she knew that the one person he most needed to speak to was the one who had walked out of his life the year before. He was briefly suspended, following Albany; his recollections of those days were hazy, and he was not particularly bothered with trying to bring the past more clearly into focus. It was only after the stink of Albany had blown away, when he was back at work and finding some semblance of normalcy for himself, that he received a call from Ruth's solicitor, and discovered that he was to be divorced in earnest.

* * *

Harry pulled the car into the drive, and killed the ignition, watching the street lights dancing on Ruth's face, watching the way her eyes shone as she stared up at the house they used to share. This day had been like nothing so much as a dream, a recollection of better days, and Harry made a promise to himself then and there. He had not fought for her, before. He had let her leave, had let anger guide him instead of following his heart, and the two years he'd spent without her in his bed had done nothing but heap misery upon him. Perhaps they were past saving, perhaps they had travelled too far down this road already, but he would choose to treat tonight as a precious gift. If nothing else, he swore he would not let her leave his sight until he'd told her the truth about what he'd found on rubbish day, and given her the opportunity to answer him. He was not sure he would ever have such a chance again, and he would not squander it.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: I originally intended for this to be two chapters, but it's a beautiful day, and I got carried away. Oh, and the end is a bit M-ish. Enjoy.**

* * *

There was something unnerving about stepping foot into that house again. It felt like something from a dream; Ruth was half expecting the whole scene to dissolve around her as she woke bleary eyed and wistful in her little flat in Oxford. Not much had changed, in the two years since she'd last seen the place; Harry had never been one for decorating, and the furniture and art upon the walls remained precisely where it had been the night she'd stormed out, leaving her rings in the tray on his dresser, her heart shattering with each step she took. At the time, she had seen little alternative. Everything had fallen to pieces around her; when he deigned to speak to her, Harry was curt, and more often than not their conversations devolved into arguing about work, rather than addressing the issues that bothered her so. She knew she was as much to blame for this as he, knew that she fell for it every time; he would sense that something personal was coming and change the topic, would bring up some irrelevant nothing from work designed to make her cross, they would bicker, and they would go to sleep angry, neither of them having given voice to the troubles that truly kept them apart. He did not kiss her, did not reach her for in the night, did not hold her hand. Most nights they ate supper separately, and with each passing day the house that she had loved, the home that she and Harry had built together, began to feel more and more like a prison.

So yes, she ran. As she shrugged out of her coat, feeling a pang of sorrow when she hung it on the hook by the door that had always been hers, she tried to remind herself of the misery of those days. Harry had been, for the most part, kind and very nearly charming since she'd gone charging into the meeting room that morning, but she told herself sternly not to be deceived. Should she choose to come back to him, to come back to the life she left behind, she had no doubt that the same problems would be lurking in the shadows, waiting for a quiet moment to roar back to life and bring her to her knees once more. She had found her freedom, and no matter how handsome Harry was, no matter how courteous, no matter how the sound of his voice or the sight of his pouty lips might move her, she told herself she could not go back to the way things were before. Having no Harry at all was better than having the angry, bitter man he had become in the final days of their marriage, and memories of happier times would not remove the pain of the events that led to their separation.

"Are you hungry?" he asked her softly as they made their way down the hall to the kitchen together.

Ruth shook her head. "Beth brought us sandwiches," she reminded him, trying not to stare too obviously. How could it be, she wondered, that every inch of this place still felt exactly the same? The kitchen had seen its share of monumental moments between the pair of them; the first time they made love, Harry had pinned her up against that wall there, and his fingers thrusting inside her had sent her tumbling over the edge before he'd even gotten her knickers off. She'd been sitting in that chair there, the night he pulled the ring from his pocket, and asked her to marry him. She had wept standing by that sink, the day that Adam Carter died, and Harry had come up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her close, telling her without words that she was not alone, that he felt as she did. And Just a few weeks before Mani took them, a few weeks before it all came tumbling down, he had hoisted her up onto that very same table, and shagged her so hard she thought it was a miracle the thing was still standing

Did Harry remember all those moments, every time he came into this room? As she looked around, she saw little evidence that Harry spent much time there. Perhaps he had avoided it, not wanting to be confronted at every turn by the ghosts of the past. By the memory of how things had been, how they _should_ be.

"Some tea, then," Harry said. This time, it was not a question. He crossed the room to start the kettle, leaving Ruth twisting her hands together in the doorway. She knew she ought to go to bed. After all, that was why she had come; she was not here to relive the glory days of her doomed marriage, or to bear her soul to the man who had once been the center of her very world. She had come here to sleep, to leave again at first light. This was no more than a stopover on her way back to her life, the life she had worked so hard to build. The lonely, boring life she had come to resent almost as much as she resented Harry, and the way things went sour between them.

Still, though, she found that no words of protest reached her lips. She did not tell him, _forget the tea, Harry, I'm going to sleep._ Ruth simply stood in silence, remembering.

Remembering how they had come together in the first place.

It started simply enough; Harry had asked her to dinner, she had accepted, and they had a lovely time. He walked her to her door, shyly asked if she would like to go out again, and kissed her goodnight. That was where things became complicated, however. She felt a little twisting in her gut, remembering the way the gossip of her colleagues had sent her running from him. How much more time would they have had, she wondered, if she'd said _bugger the lot of you,_ and gone out with him when he asked? How different might things have been?

But no, she had declined, not wanting to become embroiled in the midst of a salacious office romance, and she managed to keep her distance from this man, this terrible, wonderful, gorgeous man, for weeks. It didn't work; every day she saw him, saw the sadness and the longing in his eyes, the same sadness, the same longing, that consumed her. She nearly gave in, that night at Havensworth, and _Christ,_ but she had been a fool to deny him. For not two weeks later, she was on a boat out to sea, cast into exile for his sake, for the sake of the love he bore her.

Her days on the run didn't last long, but they provided her a valuable insight. She had been a fool, to try to deny the truth of her heart, to waste precious time that could have been spent loving him, instead of in misery and solitude. And so it was that, six months into her exile, she took a risk. Sent him a postcard, told him she loved him. It was easier somehow to write the words than to say them; she did not have to face the heat of his gaze, did not have to torture herself with endless worries about the future. Harry, bless him, had taken one look at that postcard and lost all restraint. He used all of his considerable charm and every favor he was owed from every corner of the government to clear her name, and eight months into her exile, showed up at her door with her passport in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. They had not fallen into bed together then, another misstep she still regretted. _Our whole lives,_ she thought sadly as she watched him pouring their tea _, are nothing more than one mistake after another. One could have been, one should have been, one never was._

Those eight months she spent alone had taught Ruth a valuable lesson, about how precious an opportunity she had been given, how nothing in life was guaranteed. She ran from town to town, never stopping long, always looking over her shoulder, honing her tradecraft at every turn and lamenting, always, for the love that could have been. The woman who returned from that journey was very different from the one who had left, cold and lonely on a little river barge. When he asked her out again she accepted, and when he kissed her, she gave him everything she had. They were married within the year.

 _We had some happy times,_ she thought wistfully. He turned around, a mug in each hand, and Ruth accepted his silent invitation to join him at the table. In silence they sat, each drinking their tea and eyeing the other warily.

* * *

Harry wasn't sure why it was that Ruth was still sitting with him, why she had not yet made her excuses and tried to run from him once more, but he was grateful for her silence, just now. Always in the past, Ruth had been the one to run, easily frightened by intimacy; everything made her nervous, and Harry more than just about anything else. He thought he knew why; after all, he had the benefit of reviewing his wife's psychological reports every year. She'd lost her father, fallen out with her mother, endured a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with a stepbrother who'd killed himself. Ruth had struggled with depression, and the constant pressure of other people's expectations was sometimes more than she could bear. He knew all this, and so he understood all too well why she had left. Ruth needed reassurance, and Harry had provided only doubt. It was too late, he knew, to change the past, to fix what he had broken, but he was determined to try. There might not ever be another chance for him to sit with her thus, alone in this kitchen in the black of night, and so he knew he must be brave, and speak.

"There's something I have to tell you," he started slowly. This conversation was nearly three years overdue, and he knew it, but he knew too that he could not spend the rest of his life wondering. If she wanted things to be over between them, so be it, but Harry would have his answers first.

Ruth raised her head slowly, her luminous eyes shifting away from her tea and onto his face. Those eyes; now blue, now green, now grey, they held him, consumed him, captivated him, enraptured him just as they had done the day he first met her, the day he looked at her and thought only, _oh no._

"A few days before…Mani," he began, hating the way she flinched when he spoke that name, hating the way those beautiful eyes snapped straight back to her tea, closing her off from him. "I took out the rubbish."

He saw the way the corner of her mouth ticked up at those words, could almost hear the playful jibe she longed to lob at him. Before everything went tits up and he lost her forever, she used to tease him about forgetting to take out the rubbish. He'd employed a housekeeper, before he married Ruth, and after they wed he sometimes forgot that if he didn't handle the rubbish, no one would.

"The bag broke, out there on the pavement," he continued. Though her face was still partially hidden from him he could see that she was curious, wondering what on earth he could have found in the rubbish that was worth all this navel gazing, three years later. "I cleaned it up," he said, struggling more and more with each word. This was agony, it really was; _why didn't you tell me, Ruth? Didn't you trust me? Didn't you love me, once? Or were you tired of me even then?_

"And I found-" Ruth sucked in a sharp breath, leaned back in her chair and wrapped her arms around her waist, looking for all the world like a frightened animal. _She knows,_ he thought. "I found a pregnancy test." There. He'd said it. _Let the chips fall where they may._ "You were very neat about it. The test and the box and the instructions were all right there together. I checked, and it was…it was positive."

Much as he wished she would, Ruth did not speak a word. Even from this distance he could see that she was trembling, just a little, but she did not weep. Her eyes found his face once more, anxious and beseeching, but she did not speak. That was left to Harry, it seemed, and so, much as it galled him, he did. She always complained, before, that he did not confide her as much as perhaps he ought, and so now he would, though it was much too late to do him any good.

"I kept waiting for you to tell me," he said, shocked by how raw his own voice sounded. "For weeks, but you never did. And then, one day it became apparent that you…weren't, any more. Why didn't you tell me, Ruth? What happened?"

* * *

Ruth had wondered many times over the course of the last two years what it might be like to see Harry again, away from the solicitors' offices. What they might say to one another, whether he would be kind or coldly furious. Never once, in all those many imaginings, had she ever considered anything even remotely like this. It was so bloody stupid; a bloody ripped bin bag had brought about the end of their marriage. Because now that Ruth knew the truth, knew what _Harry_ had known, it all became so suddenly crystal clear. His distance from her, the way he always seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. He _had_ been waiting, waiting for her, and she had been blithely ignorant, thinking that however difficult things were, at least she'd managed to avoid that painful conversation. Now it seemed she'd only managed to put it off for three years.

"I'm so sorry, Harry," she breathed, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

"How could you keep a secret like that? From me?" he demanded. She could feel the anger, the betrayal radiating off of him in waves. _It was my fault,_ she realized. _I did this to us. Not Mani, not the job. Me._

"I…I…Oh, Harry. _Jesus_. All right." The words tumbled out of her, and she caught herself for a moment, giving her head a little shake, scrubbing at her face with her hands before drawing in a deep breath. _Here we go._

"Yes," she said, a bit more slowly. "I was pregnant. I didn't tell you, Harry, because I knew it wouldn't take, and I-"

"How? How did you know?" His voice was hard, and only getting harder, the further they ventured down this path. She recognized that tone; he'd used it on her once before, during her one and only disciplinary hearing. It infuriated her now, as it had done then, but she told herself to stay calm. _He deserves to know the truth._

"That…wasn't the first time it happened. A long time ago, while I was still at university, I had a miscarriage. It was early on; I hadn't even realized I was pregnant." For years Ruth had neatly talked herself out of having this conversation with Harry, thinking that it wouldn't be necessary, that their lives had no room for children, and there was no need to bother him with a trauma so long buried. She knew now how wrong she had been, but there was no way to undo the damage. She had hidden this piece of herself from him, and paid the price with their marriage. "I had cysts, Harry. In…in my ovaries. Do you know-"

"I know what that means," he said slowly, refusing to look at her now. Ruth nodded, and continued on with her sorry tale.

"For me, that meant it was almost impossible for me to get pregnant. And even more impossible for the baby to come to term. At the time, I thought there was no use in telling you until I was sure. I didn't want to…bother you with it. We had a good life, and I knew you didn't want to have a baby, anyway, so instead of going through all that, all that painful discussion, instead of hurting you, I didn't tell you. And I was right. I miscarried two weeks after…Mani."

* * *

Harry's head was spinning, just a bit. How could she not have told him? Not just about the baby; she had a serious medical condition, and she'd never once mentioned it to him. There was no sign of it on her official medical reports on file with Five; of course, this was Ruth he was talking to, and doctoring those reports would have been well within her capabilities. With that one confession, she had neatly snuffed out his anger; he saw the sorrow in her, saw how much it had cost her to keep this to herself, saw how both of them had made their assumptions, and both of them had been wrong. Before he'd even really considered how he wanted to respond, he found himself speaking.

"Why did you think I wouldn't want a baby?"

He watched, bemused, as she sighed, cocked her head to the side and stared at him in that way she had, her gaze wretched, soulful, honest. In her eyes he could see every broken piece of himself, and he found himself falling in love with her all over again.

"Harry, you're fifty-seven-"

"I wasn't three years ago!" he protested indignantly.

Ruth smiled at him, just a little, a sad, soft smile that made him long more than anything to take her into his arms, and kiss her.

"Harry, can you really imagine us chasing after a three year old right now?"

What hurt the most about her question was that yes, yes he could, and judging by the tears that had begun to gather in the corner of her eyes, so could she. Perhaps he was too old, perhaps he had seen too much, but _yes_ , he could imagine them with a child, and it broke his heart, to think of what could have been. And what hurt him even more was the brokenness he saw in his wife, was knowing that she had carried this burden on her own for all these years, because she had been too afraid to tell him, and he had been too afraid to tell her that he already knew. He had wondered, many times, what had happened, how it had all fallen apart. Had she been ill? Did it hurt? Did she wish he had been there, to offer her comfort? He did not know. He did not know, but he could ask, could keep talking. On this night, in the middle of all of this grief, he felt closer to his wife than he had in years, and he did not want to lose that closeness now, did not want to be hampered by his own stammering tongue.

"I kept waiting for you to tell me," he said again. Quietly he rose, and took their two empty mugs to the sink, a plan forming in the back of his mind. Ruth rose as well, taking one tentative step towards him before stopping in her tracks, twisting her hands together. "I wasn't angry, Ruth. I was…hopeful. I thought it would be a good thing, for us. I wanted to share this with you."

"I know, and I'm sorry. God, Harry, I'm so sorry."

He turned to face her, saw the tracks of tears winding their way down her cheeks, and made a decision. Ever so slowly, he approached her, speaking to her softly.

"Are we really so inept?" he asked. Back then, he didn't speak to her, because he was waiting for her to come to him, to tell him what she was going through. He didn't touch her, because he wasn't sure how such advances would received, given, well, everything. And all the while, she thought _he_ was drawing away, and she was left isolated and defensive. It was all so bloody _stupid_ , and now that he knew the truth, he only wanted to fix things between them.

"You didn't speak to me any more, Harry," she said, despairing. His heart leapt; she was giving him the perfect opening. "You didn't speak to me," she repeated in that sad little voice. "You didn't touch me."

Harry reached out and cupped her cheek in her hand, and when she gasped he felt it tingling across his fingertips. "I'm speaking to you now, aren't I?" he asked, taking one step closer, winding his free arm around her waist, drawing her body in tight against his own. "I'm touching you now, Ruth," he said softly, drawing his hand down, along the smooth column of her throat, his thumb tracing patterns across her collarbone.

* * *

It would be impossible to say, later, who moved first. All Ruth knew was that the moment Harry touched her she caught fire, burning alive with need of him, with longing for the way things used to be, the way _he_ used to be, before she'd gone and mucked it all up. All she knew was he was looking at her with eyes that said all too plainly that he wanted nothing more than to devour her whole. One moment she was weeping, and the next moment they were locked in a fierce kiss, their hands scrambling in their haste to draw as close to one another as possible. His tongue was in her mouth, furiously sliding along the length of her own, his soft, full lips pressed hard and fast to hers, drawing the breath from her lungs, giving it back in turn. His hands slid around to her back, down to her bum, clutching her tightly, thrusting her against him. Her own cupped his face, holding him next to her as he plundered her mouth relentlessly, stoked the flames that consumed her, pushed the conflagration higher and higher until somehow, there had to be more.

No one had ever kissed her like Harry. No one had ever been as demanding, as confident, as devastatingly erotic as this man and the way he touched her. She needed him now, had needed him for years, and she let go of every hesitation, every thought, every rationalization, reduced to nothing more than primal instinct and the need to let him claim her for his own. For she was his, and always had been.

She followed the path of his throat with her fingertips, feeling his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed and kissed her that much harder. Her hands continued on their journey until she reached his shirt buttons, and began to unfasten them as quickly as she could manage. Once he realized what she was up to, Harry took the initiative, deftly relieving her of her skirt with one quick tug. Ruth kicked it away, never once taking her lips from his. Still they kissed, furiously, breathlessly, desperately, their bodies intertwined, as if the world outside had burned around them, and all that was left was this, them, together.

Harry tore his mouth from hers with a gasp, but before she could protest, he had taken hold of her blouse, and yanked it from her body. Eager to even the score between them Ruth gave up trying to unfasten the last of his buttons, and with clumsy hands tore the shirt away from him, the last few buttons ricocheting off the tiled kitchen floor. They stood staring at one another for no longer than an instant, panting, hungry, wanting, and then he was on her once more.

When he crushed her against him, his kiss once more stealing the breath from her lungs, she whimpered, just a little, and the sound spurred him on. Deftly Harry turned them, using the hands that had once more gravitated to her bum to lift her slightly, and set her down upon the table. Ruth did not hesitate; she wrapped her legs around his hips and drew him closer still. His hands massaged her breasts, his tongue thrust into her mouth, and between her thighs she could feel him already hard for her, even through his trousers.

* * *

Time itself had stopped; there was only this, her nails raking trails of fire down his bare back, her breathy moans as he dragged his lips across the pale skin of her throat, the stubble on his cheeks leaving her skin red and begging for attention. There was no need for Harry to ask her what she wanted; she was grinding herself against him, moaning when he sank his teeth into the juncture of her shoulder. He had to have her; nothing else existed for him, save her, save for this, better than his memories, more honest now than it had ever been between them. It was a bit rougher than their couplings had been in the past; they had slammed together with such force that all rational thought had left him, and all that remained was his need of her.

He caught each of her nipples between his fingertips, pinching through the fabric of her bra until she moaned, and then his right hand continued on its southward journey, over the soft, smooth skin of her stomach, under the elastic of her knickers, into the warmth and wet between her thighs. The sounds now escaping her mouth were indescribable, as she threw her hands out behind her, leveraging herself on the table top, thrusting her hips against his hand, fucking herself on his fingers while he watched, mesmerized and completely, hopelessly in love with her. Her head rolled back on her shoulders, exposing her throat to him, showing off the darkening bruise his teeth had left, and still he moved his hand, desperate to watch her come undone, to feel the familiar fluttering of her muscles around his hand.

In the midst of this euphoric explosion, the sound of his mobile ringing in his trouser pocket was as unwelcome as a car bomb. They ground to a halt, panting like boxers after a hard bout, his fingers still locked tight inside her, his hand cradling her sex, his eyes locked on hers. With his gaze he asked a question, and with a bone-deep sigh, she responded.

"Answer it, Harry," she said. He leaned forward, the fingers of his right hand still thrusting slowly against her, and caught her lips in his own. "We're not finished yet," he promised her. With his left hand, he reached into his pocket, and retrieved his mobile.

"Yes," he spat the word, the taste of Ruth still on his tongue, her wetness still clutched firmly in his hand.

"Harry," Beth answered on the other end of the line, and his heart sank. "Greg Lawson is dead."


	7. Chapter 7

_What the hell just happened?_ Ruth wondered as she sat beside Harry in a strange sort of daze, trying desperately to bring the clamorous riot of her body back under control, struggling to focus on the task at hand, and not…well, not on _Harry's_ hands, and the way they'd made her feel, touching her as he had not done for years. It was all so bloody sudden; all it took, all it had ever taken, for her strength to dissolve, for desire to overcome the rigid rationalization of her overactive mind, was a single smoldering look from Harry. In a way she resented that, resented how easy it was for him to shatter her resolve and leave her breathless with longing for him, completely uninhibited and desperate for whatever piece of himself he was willing to give her. She wasn't entirely sure that their rather brief conversation in the kitchen would be enough to smooth over the grief of the past three years, the year they'd spent falling apart and the two that had come after it. Could it really be so simple, she asked herself; could it really be true that all their pain, all their bitter sniping words and nights spent in loneliness and isolation had been the result of a single misunderstanding, one that had been rectified over the course of one brief discussion? _What happens next? Where do we go from here?_ What if she tried again, to live with Harry, to be his wife, to be everything to him once more, and six months later they found themselves in the exact same situation, bickering and cross and deeply mistrustful of one another? Ruth wasn't sure she had it in her, to go through that again.

Harry was quiet as well, though she imagined this had less to with any reticence he might be feeling about their having reignited their relationship and more with a need to dispense with the lingering evidence of their tryst on the table. Ruth was grateful that she didn't have to worry about such things; the only evidence of their time spent together that showed on her body was the mark of Harry's teeth on the juncture between her neck and shoulder, easily hidden beneath her cardigan, and the flush in her cheeks that stubbornly refused to fade.

 _Greg Lawson,_ she reminded herself, surreptitiously squeezing her thighs together and trying to ignore the lingering ache that remained in the wake of their brutal crashing together. _Who is Greg Lawson, what did he want from me, and what's happened to him?_ It was no good; try though she might to distract herself with thoughts of the operation she could not forget the way he'd felt, his tongue in her mouth, his fingers inside her, the sounds of her own breathy moans echoing in her ears. _How did we ever manage to work together, before?_ she wondered, stealing a brief glance at him, watching the muscles in his forearms revealed by his rolled-back sleeves bunching and twisting with each turn of the wheel. She shivered, just a little, and immediately averted her eyes once more. Yes, that was a mystery, for now all she could seem to think about was jumping him again at the next possible opportunity; the Nutters in the park were a distant second on her list of priorities.

All too soon the car rumbled to a halt. Thames House loomed before her, and she took a long, ragged breath. Beside her Harry pulled the keys from the ignition, tucking them in his trouser pocket before turning to face her for the first time since they'd set off.

"Are you all right?" he asked her, his voice a low, rumbling growl. That voice did nothing to calm the frantic stuttering of her heart, and the depth of yearning in his soft hazel eyes nearly did her in. She would have let him take her then and there, in the back seat of his rover, had she not known for a fact that there was a CCTV camera trained on this very spot. Ruth wanted to say no, she was not bloody all right; her blood was thrumming through her veins, crying out with need of him, she'd somehow been dragged back into the inner workings of the Grid, and if she didn't return to Oxford first thing in the morning things were going to become complicated indeed, as she'd need to alert her students to her absence and find someone to feed her cats and come up with some lie to explain it all away. Everything was happening entirely too quickly for her tastes, and she'd had no time to wrap her mind around, well, any of it.

"I will be," she answered him softly, unable to stop herself from reaching out and placing a gentle hand on his forearm, feeling his soft, warm skin burning beneath her fingertips. "Are you?"

He gave her a look that said all too plainly _I will be once I have you in my bed,_ but did not speak. After a moment she moved her hand, and the loss of contact seemed to galvanize them both into action. They stepped from the car, gave themselves a little shake, and headed into work.

* * *

It had taken the entire length of the drive from his home to Thames House for Harry to pull himself back under control, and the simple touch of Ruth's hand on his arm had very nearly undone all the good work of his mental gymnastics. It had always been like this between them, electric and needy and delightfully intense, but in all the years they'd spent apart he'd nearly forgotten the way she so easily climbed beneath his skin. He wasn't sure what had happened between them, in that kitchen that used to be theirs; he didn't know where he stood with her, didn't know if that one conversation had been enough to bring her back into his life or if there was more groveling and explaining to be done. Whatever it took he would do it, and happily, would serve whatever penance she chose to require of him, so long as at the end of it he had her naked and moaning beneath his touch once more. He needed her, body and soul; he always had done.

Now was not the time though, and he knew it. One word from her and he'd gladly ring Towers this instant, deliver his resignation, hand Dimitri the keys to his office and wash his hands of the whole bloody business, but he knew that Ruth would never ask such a thing of him. She was circumspect in everything, and even now, even after having drawn so close to her once more, he found he had no inkling of what she was thinking. All that was left to him was this, was to walk once more onto the Grid and wade into the breach, to discover who had killed this man, and whether the threat posed by the Nutters in the park was as imminent as Dimitri thought it to be.

It seemed that for now they had silently agreed to place their personal situation on the back burner, to be dealt with once the current crisis had passed. This gave Harry little hope, however; there was always another crisis on the horizon, always another battle to fight. It was part of what had drawn them apart from one another in the beginning; he'd told himself he would speak to her once her wounds from their ordeal at Mani's hands had healed, once she'd recovered from Jo's death, once they'd dealt with Nightingale, once his grief over Ros had abated. The horror never seemed to end, and each day his job demanded more of him. He could bear it, when he and Ruth were working together as a team, when he could lean on her slender shoulders, but without her steady guidance he found himself engulfed in misery and confusion.

 _She's here now, though,_ he told himself. _Surely that's enough._

They made their way inside, and though he dearly longed to reach out and rest his hand at the base of her spine he resisted; Harry knew that the moment he touched her he would no longer be able to maintain a professional distance, and he'd likely end up slamming her up against the nearest hard surface. It wouldn't do, to indulge in such desires within the walls of Thames House – though he had often entertained the notion in the past – and so he kept his distance, trying to comfort himself with the thought that perhaps they might have another chance in just a few hours, if only they could get a grip on the Nutters situation.

On the Grid the team had already assembled in the meeting room, and so Harry and Ruth joined them, taking their customary seats and sitting next to each other, though he noticed with delight that Ruth had drawn her chair much closer to his own that it had been previously.

"What have we got?" Harry barked, trying to keep the smile from his face.

"I got a call from one of my friends at the Met. Greg Lawson was found dead in his home earlier this evening, single gunshot wound to the head," Dimtri began. "The Nutters have cleared out of the park-"

"When?" Harry demanded. _No one mentioned that,_ he thought, a sense of foreboding bursting the happy little bubble that had begun to grow inside his chest.

"Er…we don't know," Tariq confessed in a small voice. Before Harry could begin a tirade he continued, "someone's interfered with our cameras. Our surveillance is up and running and on the video feed it appears that everyone is still present and accounted for, but Dimitri's contact at the Met assured him that when they arrived at Lawson's home, the park was empty. He even sent pictures; they've all dispersed, even…the Head Nutter."

 _I'm getting too old for this,_ Harry thought grimly.

"How could they have interfered with the cameras?" Ruth asked. She had retrieved her little notebook from her bag, and was once again studiously scribbling away. Harry tried not to smile fondly at her.

"They're transmitting wirelessly; it would be difficult, but not impossible, to hack the feeds," Tariq said. "And our man on the pillar might have something to do with that. We've finally got a name for him."

With the click of a button, Tariq pulled a photograph of the Head Nutter up on the screen on the far wall. It was Beth who picked up the thread here.

"Anthony Wheeler, age 45. He's an old friend of Lawson's, they were at school together. He's something of a technical genius; apparently he invented some bit of kit that's used in mobile phones, and it made him very, very rich."

"Not your every day religious extremist," Ruth observed. Privately Harry agreed; ordinarily their terrorists were young men, men who had been isolated and quietly radicalized as they found a new community in their religion. An ordinary man like this, one with money and a comfortable life, was not the sort they encountered often.

"Why did it take us so long to put a name to him?" Harry asked. Across the table, his young team shifted uneasily in their chairs, reminding him forcefully of the way his children used to balk when they were small and he was attempting to discipline them.

"Like Beth said, he knows his way around computers. We think he's scrubbed all trace of himself from the internet, or at least, he's tried to. We only know his name because his car was parked at Lawson's house. My contact at the Met ran his plates, and it wasn't until I saw his photo that I put it together," Dimitri confessed.

"All right, we need to find Wheeler, and now. See if we can put names to any of the others who were at the park. Tariq, I want you on CCTV. Dimitri, go and talk to the plods, I want you to sit on them, and everything they find you relay straight back to me. Beth, start looking into Wheeler. I'm not entirely convinced his newfound religion is genuine. Ruth," here Harry stopped for a breath, turning to look at her. She was here beside him, and it felt so bloody _right_ that he nearly reached out and kissed her right then, out of sheer exuberance. "Do you still know anyone at GCHQ?"

Perhaps she felt it, too, felt the way they had so easily slipped back into place, felt as if the sun were shining on her face for the first time in two years. Perhaps her heart was singing, as was his. Perhaps she was beginning to wonder, as he was, if they had finally made it through, if this would be the first day of a new chapter for the pair of them. Perhaps she did, because when he spoke to her, she smiled.

"I think I might," she said.


	8. Chapter 8

The hour had grown so late as to be early; the sun was threatening to rise on the world beyond the walls of Thames House, but deep in the bowels of the Grid Ruth was oblivious to the coming of a new day. She should have left hours ago, and she knew it. She shouldn't have allowed herself to be ensnared in the shadowy world of spies once more; she'd spent the last two years trying to break free from that painful part of her past. Yet she had come, had chosen to take the train from Oxford, had stepped onto the bus, had marched right up to the security desk and given her full name and demanded to speak to her husband. As much as she might try to convince herself otherwise, Ruth had not been forced into this; she had chosen to come, and she had chosen to stay.

In her heart she knew why. It wasn't just that she was restless, wasn't just that she felt she was wasting her potential lecturing bored undergraduates and writing articles no one would ever read. It was _Harry._ Neither spite nor hate nor simple curiosity compelled her; it was only this, that she missed him, with everything she had, and she could not bring herself to pass up the opportunity to see his face, just one more time. When it came to Harry nothing was ever easy, nothing was ever simple or uncomplicated, and she knew it. He was a package deal; Harry and the Grid, Harry and the Service, Harry and danger. Ruth knew this, and she loved him anyway.

"You don't have to do this," she told him for perhaps the tenth time in the last hour. They were standing together in his office, the room miraculously unchanged in the eight years since Ruth had first set foot inside it. The back wall was still painted that aggressively masculine shade of red, the same trinkets and knickknacks adorning the shelves, supposedly gathered on Harry's travels, never explained. No photos, not even a kitschy calendar to offer a hint as to the personality of the man who owned that space, to give some explanation of who he was beyond those walls. How many times, she wondered, had they stood here together, flirting or arguing, slowly falling apart, slowly falling together?

Harry was standing behind his desk, his knuckles resting against the worn wood, his shoulders hunched. Ruth stood on the opposite side, twisting her hands together, pleading with him as she had not done for years. _How many times?_ She wondered. _How many times will I have to watch him walk away, and wonder if it is the last?_ As she spoke he sighed and righted himself. Without sparing her another glance he crossed to the back of the room, opening the inauspicious door that housed his coat closet. From inside he withdrew a fresh shirt and jacket, and set about removing the wrinkled set he already wore. Ruth watched him, transfixed as always by the rippling of his muscles, so often hidden beneath his sharp suits, always hinted at, only ever revealed to her, an intimate sight only she was privy to. The blinds were drawn, offering him some modicum of privacy, but he did not bat an eye at her presence as he began to unbutton his shirt. She'd seen it all before, of course. Only a few hours before, her fingernails had left the marks she saw scoring his back when he turned from her.

"It has to be me," he said gruffly. "Dimitri's been to the park, and we don't know if they're watching. If Wheeler sees him, he may get suspicious. Wheeler's made an appointment to speak with the bank manager, and he's under the impression that he's meeting with a man called Richard. I don't think Beth could pull that off, do you?"

The plan, such as it was, had come together over the course of the last hour. Using a combination of facial recognition software and sheer willpower Tariq had put names to about half of the Nutters, and Beth had managed to uncover Wheeler's plan to empty his bank account. He had been stymied in his original attempt; apparently the man had a substantial amount in the account, and the bank would not release it without his first sitting down to a meeting. They didn't have enough information to arrest Wheeler, not yet, but if Harry could meet with him, shake his hand and plant a tracker on him and get a feel for his psychological state, they were one step closer to resolving this. The police very much wanted to speak to Wheeler, but Harry was adamant that they needed to determine whether he had obtained the weapons he'd boasted about, and whether his followers posed an imminent threat. If they did, if these people were already armed and ready to go, they not need Wheeler at all, might well move into position while the police were busy with their interrogation. The whole operation had to be stopped; Greg Lawson's death was only one piece of the puzzle.

Though she could not say why, exactly, Ruth was completely terrified at the prospect of Harry stepping out into the field. By all accounts it would be a simple operation; Harry would pose as the bank manager, speak to Wheeler for a few minutes, hand him a case stuffed with cash and a wireless transmitter, and then make his way back to the Grid as soon as the coast was clear. It was routine, really, except that Ruth couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was coming. She recalled all too clearly the last time she had felt this way, when Harry had insisted on driving to the hotel on that fateful day, the day Ros died, the day it all came crumbling down. There had been no reason for him to go; in the aftermath, even Harry was forced to admit that his presence on the scene had not altered the course of events in any tangible way. It was reckless, his choice to put himself in harm's way that day, and at the time Ruth had taken it as a slap in the face, had thought that the way Harry left her, with no regard for her professional opinion or her personal doubts, was the final sign that he was well and truly finished with her. And though she knew better now, knew that he was right and there was no else who could accomplish the task he'd set before himself, still those feelings of fear and betrayal lingered.

"I'll be on coms the whole time," he said in a voice that was meant to be reassuring. "You and Tariq will hear every word I say. I'll be back before you know it."

He'd finished buttoning his shirt, his tie draped around his neck, and he made his way towards her. Carefully he reached out, clasped her arms in his hands, rubbing gently. The touch of his hand scorched her, even through the blouse she wore; _we never should have come back,_ she thought as she reached out, catching the ends of his tie in her hands and beginning to knot it for him before she even realized what she was doing. _We should have said bugger the lot of you, and stayed in the kitchen. We should have finished what we started._

"You be careful, yes?" she said softly. The corners of Harry's mouth ticked up into a rueful little smile; he'd said precisely the same thing to her, the day she left him on the docks. There was so much between them, so much grief, so much pain, but there was joy, too, if only Ruth could remember it.

"And you," he murmured, echoing the words she'd spoken just before she kissed him goodbye.

To her horror, Ruth felt the prickling of tears behind her eyelids. She furiously tried to force them away, lifting her gaze to his face. There was so much yet to be decided; though she had kissed him, though he had held her, though they had crashed together like a stormy sea beating itself to death upon an unrelenting pile of rock, she did not yet know what the future might hold for them. It might be best for her to return to Oxford after all; though she loved him with everything she had, she wasn't sure she had it in her to continue living this way, knowing each day that he might be ripped away from her, or she from him. The violence, the senselessness, the never-ending parade of loss had taken its toll on her soul.

It was time for him to go, and she knew it. She looked up into his face, and saw him smiling sweetly down at her. Ever so slowly he closed the gap between them; she used the hand still clutching his tie to draw his face down to hers, and when he kissed her, she laid herself open for him, trying to show him everything she felt, the fear and the grief and the love, always the love, binding them together, tearing her apart.

"I love you," he murmured against her lips, and she nearly laughed, a hysterical, desperate sort of sound. She had admonished him, earlier, for leaving her that day and not telling her he loved her first. Maybe he had been listening to her, after all.

"I love you, too," she breathed, and as he kissed her, she felt him smile.

* * *

Beth had never felt a tension quite like this one on the Grid before. She and Ruth and Tariq were crammed together around a computer in Tariq's lair, waiting for Wheeler to arrive for his meeting with Harry. There had been days, since she'd first come to Five, when it felt like the world was ending. When everything was desperate, frantic activity, or conversely, when it felt as if they were holding their collective breath, waiting for fire to rain down from heaven. This was different; Ruth was wound tight as a spring, sitting immobilized in a chair beside Tariq, her back ramrod straight, barely breathing. Tariq and Beth were desperately confused by her apparent fear, and Beth's mind was racing a mile a minute, trying to determine what they had missed, what could possibly have frightened the woman so.

There had not been time, over the last twenty-four hours, for Beth to go digging around for Ruth's personnel file as she had originally intended, and so there were many questions she'd yet to find the answer to. How Ruth had ended up with Harry, why she had left, it all remained a mystery. Tariq had dropped a few cryptic hints; apparently he had known people who knew her, who talked of her every now and again in hushed whispers, as if she were a saint, as if she were a martyr. Beth had been rather pleased to learn that Ruth was infamous in her own right; apparently she'd had quite the career, and her achievements were more notable than simply surviving a few rocky years as Lady Pearce.

It was still so strange, facing this side of Harry that Beth had never really considered before. Ruth remained the only person Beth had ever heard refer to Harry as a bastard within his hearing, and Harry's response had been baffling; he'd seemed very nearly pleased. They shouldn't have worked, shouldn't have made sense together, but somehow, they just _did._ Harry had been kinder, with Ruth around; it was Harry who had given Beth the money to go out and buy them all dinner the night before. That was a first.

He was wired up, with a GPS transmitter in his watch, a mic on his lapel, and a tiny camera attached to one of his shirt buttons. From their vantage point they had a clear view of the bank manager's office, and any minute now Wheeler would appear, asking for his money. If it weren't for Ruth's strange demeanor, Beth probably would have left Tariq alone on surveillance, but some of Ruth's uneasiness had passed itself onto Beth, and so here she sat, waiting.

Wheeler was punctual; at precisely nine o'clock a pretty young secretary ushered him into the office, and Harry rose to greet him.

"Mr. Wheeler," Harry said jovially, extending his hand. Beth watched, transfixed; Wheeler had cut his hair and shaved his beard, and he looked…well, _normal._ Shockingly normal, in fact. His suit was clean and pressed, and there wasn't a smudge of dirt to be seen, where before his face had been streaked with it. "Richard Blackburn," Harry introduced himself. "Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything? Tea, coffee, water?"

Wheeler shook his head, smiling tightly. "No, thank you." His voice was soft and not at all hoarse or terrifying, the way it had been before. It was unnerving, really, to see him presenting such a different face. Not for the first time, Beth found herself wondering what the bloody hell this man was up to.

"I understand you wanted to close your account," Harry began. He had been briefed by the real Richard Blackburn, a small, twitchy sort of man who had carefully explained to Harry precisely what sort of questions he should ask.

Wheeler nodded, and Harry continued on. "If you're opening an account at another institution, we could simply wire the funds for you. It would be much safer that way." Blackburn had said as much; the thought of letting all that money walk out the door in cash form had alarmed the poor man to such a degree that Beth had been concerned he might faint dead away from the sheer stress of it all.

"I appreciate that," Wheeler said smoothly, "but it's not necessary." He offered no further explanation, and his tone was careful, calculating. He reminded Beth of a solicitor speaking to the police; answer only the question you are asked, give no more information than is absolutely necessary.

Harry made a show of shifting around uncomfortably. "Right," he said. "Is there nothing we might be able to do to persuade you to keep your business with our institution?"

"No, thank you," Wheeler said.

 _Well, you have to give it to him, at least he's a polite terrorist_ , Beth thought glumly. That was something of a novelty, in their business.

Harry sighed, somewhat theatrically, Beth thought. "Very well, then. I have your money here." He stood and retrieved the briefcase containing the money and the transmitter. "Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you in the future."

Wheeler and Harry shook hands, Harry bid him good day, and just like that, their mark was gone, his progress marked on a nearby computer monitor. The little red dot beeped along, following him out of the bank and onto the high street.

"Home, Omega is on the move," Harry murmured softly, making a show of shifting through the papers on his desk.

"Copy that, Alpha One," Tariq responded. "We're tracking his progress. Five more minutes, and you'll be clear to leave."

"Is Gazelle there?" Harry asked.

 _Gazelle?_ Beth wondered. There was no one else in the field on this operation, and that code name had not been issued to anyone as far as she was aware. In front of her Ruth leaned forward, and spoke softly.

"I'm here, Alpha One," she said. Strangely, Ruth had not relaxed one iota since Wheeler's departure. If anything, her face seemed more drawn than it had done a moment before.

"I told you there was nothing to worry about," Harry said in an oddly gentle tone of voice. Ruth did not respond.

Watching the pair of them interacting had been an illuminating experience for Beth, to say the least. Before Ruth had erupted onto the Grid the day before, _gentle_ and _kind_ and _charming_ were not words she would have thought to apply to Harry. It was clear that, whatever had transpired between them, Harry was still hopelessly in love with her, and Beth couldn't help hoping that perhaps they might work it out, in the end. She quite liked Ruth, and she quite liked the way Harry behaved when his wife was around.

The minutes passed, and finally Harry packed up his things, and departed the bank, assuring the sweaty Mr. Blackburn that his money was being monitored, and all was well. Ruth was twisting her hands together in her lap, hardly blinking as she watched Harry make his way to the carpark behind the bank where he had left a nondescript pool car. The carpark made Ruth nervous, Beth recalled, because there was no CCTV back there, and it was only used by employees. There was no clear line of sight from there to the street, blocked in as it was by buildings, and Ruth had wondered if perhaps it might have been safer for Harry to park in a more visible location. Harry had argued that he needed to use employee parking in case Wheeler was still watching, and eventually Ruth had acquiesced.

They watched his progress, his little button cam bobbing up and down nauseatingly as he walked across the pavement.

He very nearly made it to the car, but before he could slip inside, there was a sudden commotion. Ruth leapt to her feet, a stricken expression on her face, as they watched three men descend on Harry; there was a mad scramble as they struck him and he did his best to fight back, but he was outnumbered, and as Beth watched, powerless, Harry was rather quickly, rather horrifically subdued and stuffed into the back of a waiting transit van. Ruth had clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified; through the tiny mic on his lapel they could hear his ragged breathing, the rumbling of the van on the road. A single drop of blood fell and landed neatly on the button cam, and the video in front of them faded into a smear of red.


	9. Chapter 9

Ruth felt strangely numb as she watched the chaos around her; Beth and Tariq desperately trying to scramble a response team, the shaky, scarlet-tinged feed from Harry's button cam, the junior agents bustling to and fro beyond them. She had known somehow, from the moment Harry first told her that he was planning to venture out into the field, that something terrible was coming. There was no logical reason for that fear, no one thing she could point to and say _this, this is how I knew;_ there was only that instinctual, intrinsic feeling that Harry was about to ripped away from her, just when she'd started to think they'd found their way back together.

She watched the video feed on the monitor, listened to Harry's ragged breaths; they'd hurt him, somehow, and Ruth could almost feel the agony of his injuries seared into her own flesh. After all, they were one and the same, weren't they? They'd taken their vows, signed the paper and wore the rings and agreed to bind themselves together, forever. That was the funny thing about forever, though; no one had ever told her how long it was supposed to last.

As she watched, blind panic bubbling somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach, she saw one of Harry's captors, hazy through the veil of blood, leaning over him. The man did not speak; he rather quickly divested Harry of his mobile, his belt, and his watch, before sliding out of sight again and, given the fact that the GPS tracker on Harry's watch lost contact about five seconds later, presumably pitched the lot out the window.

A strangled sound escaped her, a sound halfway between a hysterical laugh and a desperate, ragged sob.

"Shit," Beth breathed. A pall of unearthly silence descended upon the three of them for a moment. _This is it,_ Ruth thought. _This is how it ends._

"The camera's transmitting wirelessly, I may be able to track it," Tariq volunteered.

Ruth gave herself a little shake, trying to clear away the tears that threatened to drown her.

"Beth," she said, her voice shaky and thin. "Call the bank. We need their CCTV, see if we can get the number plate on the van. Tariq, do you still have Dimitri on the line?"

Tariq nodded dumbly, and handed her the phone he still clutched in his hands.

"Dimitri?" Strangely, Ruth was growing steadier by the second; there was work to be getting on with. The only way to get Harry back was to throw everything they had at these madmen, to use all of their skills and all of their resources to put an end to the horror before it went too far. She remembered something Harry had told her once, when Danny and Fiona had been held hostage; _I promise you there will be time to grieve, but not now,_ he'd told her. _Now it's not about Danny and Fiona, but about two hostages._ She couldn't think about Harry, couldn't think about his hands or his warm smile or the way he used to wrap himself around her as she slept. She had a hostage to save.

"Are you still with the plods?" she asked.

"Yeah, yeah, we're just leaving Greg Lawson's house now," Dimitri answered. He sounded shaken and uncertain.

When she'd first arrived on the Grid, Ruth had been struck by how _young_ this team of agents was; she'd done a little digging, yesterday, and discovered that none of them had been with Five for longer than about two years. Dimitri might be Section Chief, but in this particular instance, Ruth was prepared to assert her seniority, and neither Dimitri nor Beth seemed to have a problem with it. "I'm texting you the names and addresses of the Nutters we've identified so far. Work with the plods; let's round up as many of them as we can, as quickly as we can. We need answers. See if one of the boys down there can run Anthony Wheeler's name through their database, tell us if he owns a white transit van. We haven't seen his face yet, but chances are good it's either him or his followers who've taken Harry. And get a team to every address associated with Wheeler. Now."

"On it," Dimitri answered, and with that he ended the call.

With the assignments now parceled out, Ruth made her way back to her borrowed workstation, thinking hard. Tariq was monitoring the video and audio feeds while desperately trying to trace Harry, and she knew it would do her no good to sit and watch and wring her hands. The team were all busy now, and Ruth felt strangely adrift. _We're missing something,_ she thought to herself. _I know we are._

* * *

Mr. Blackburn at the bank had practically fallen over himself in his haste to get Beth the footage she wanted, but as she scrolled through it, her heart sank. There were no cameras trained on the carpark where Harry had been taken, and the street cameras were angled all wrong; the van had come and gone without once flashing its plates at the camera. _They planned this,_ she thought. _They knew where the cameras were, and how to avoid them._ She had put out requests to all the nearby businesses, but they were slow in complying; a helpful plod was on the ground there at the bank, trying to rush things along, but for the moment, she was stymied.

Wheeler did not own a transit van, and neither did any of his associates; the ones who had so far been taken into custody were adamantly refusing to speak, though Dimitri was still valiantly working that angle, hopeful that someone would crack. Somehow Ruth had managed to harangue the DG into allowing them to use a helicopter to track the van; they'd had no luck as yet, but Ruth was insistent that they keep looking. _And isn't that odd_? Beth thought. Ruth had been off the Grid for two years now, and yet she still apparently possessed enough clout to talk the D-bloody-G round to her way of thinking; _I suppose there must be some benefits to being Lady Pearce._ Tariq's attempts to trace Harry's button cam had so far proved futile, but he refused to give up, sweating and swearing and pounding away at his keyboard like some sort of deranged Classical composer. Beth left him to it, and wandered back across the Grid.

She found herself drawn to Ruth; the woman had made herself a nest of papers and computers, with the feed from the helicopter running on one monitor and some sort of incomprehensible data search on the other. There had been a moment, just an instant immediately following Harry's capture, when Beth was certain that Ruth was about to fall to pieces. Her face had been pale, her hands trembling, tears sparkling diamond-bright in the corners of her glorious eyes. But somehow she had held together; drawing upon some unfathomable reserve of strength and fortitude Ruth's whole demeanor had completely changed. She didn't bark orders the way Harry did, with all the gruff animosity of a drill sergeant. Ruth had simply spoken in her warm, soft voice, a voice that possessed a sort of compelling quality, as the sirens of myth, a voice that could not be ignored or denied. Strange that, Beth thought, that a woman so gentle and unassuming could possess such undeniable tenacity. _Stubborn mule,_ Harry had called her. Though Beth hadn't understood it at the time, she thought she knew now why he'd sounded so affectionate when he'd said it.

"Any luck?" she asked, leaning against Ruth's desk and rubbing a hand across the back of her neck in exhaustion. None of them had gotten any sleep, having worked through the night, but this was nothing new for Beth.

"Plods think the van was heading east; the helicopter has just turned that way, and hopefully we'll have a visual soon," Ruth answered in a tone that was not hopeful in the least. "And in the meantime, I'm looking into Greg Lawson."

"Greg Lawson?" Beth repeated, flummoxed. What was the bloody point, she wondered, of investigating a dead man, one who had been spotted at the park only rarely, who did not appear to be privy to Wheeler's grandest plans?

Ruth nodded, offering a sad, almost sympathetic sort of smile. In Beth's experience that was the sort of smile often worn by teachers who were lecturing particularly thick students, trying patiently to bring them around to some new idea.

" _God is in the details,"_ Ruth told her. "Lawson owned the park. He and Wheeler were old friends. He'll hold the key to this, you'll see."

"Right," Beth said faintly. She _couldn't_ see it, but she had seen enough of Ruth in action over the last twenty-four hours or so to trust her instincts. After all, Ruth had been right, about the carpark being a trap. _What must she be feeling?_ Beth wondered. Her husband was out there, somewhere, hurt and alone and held captive by madmen, and yet here she sat, looking for God in the details of an ordinary man's life.

"Are you all right?" she asked on impulse. It seemed the thing to do, offer comfort from one woman to another, though she herself had never particularly good at the tea and biscuits routine.

Ruth stiffened slightly, and turned her attention back to the computer. "I'll be all right when we get Harry back."

* * *

Harry's chest was aching with each breath he took; he was fairly certain they'd broken at least one of his ribs, and there was a nasty cut above his eye that wouldn't stop bleeding. They'd bound his hands the moment his back had collided with the floor of the van, and the plastic ties they'd used were digging into his wrists; each time he moved they cut deeper, until the ties were slippery with blood. There were two men up front and two in the back with him, dirty, unsmiling men who watched him in an unsettling silence. He'd tried to speak to them at first, when they tossed his watch out the window, the GPS tracker shattering uselessly on the pavement outside. He knew Ruth would be listening, and he wanted to give her any clues he could. He was rewarded with a split lip and a harsh bark of _no talking!_ He did not persist in the attempt.

Instead he tried to focus on the van; _that was a left turn_ , he thought, counting the seconds, trying to reckon how fast they were moving, how far they'd traveled. There were no windows in the back of the van, however, and he quickly lost track. All he could do was sit in silence, thinking of Ruth, his beautiful, brilliant Ruth, and hoping against hope that she would find some way to get him out of this mess. If anyone could it would be her, he knew. _Though she'll be cross with me, when this is done,_ he thought glumly. She had been worried, he knew, and he had ignored her concerns. Not for the first time, he wondered how she did it, how that labyrinthine brain of hers managed to put together all the disparate pieces of the unfathomable puzzle, how she was always right, and he was always left in awe of her. This was what his team had been missing, these last two years; that innate knowledge, that instinct. No one held a candle to Ruth, when it came to solving a riddle.

At long last, the van came to a halt. Harry was bundled out of the van and into a derelict warehouse, more a hollowed out shell than a building. He was immediately, uncomfortably reminded of the warehouse where Mani had taken him and Ruth, all those years ago. Only this time, this time he prayed she would not be dragged into this hell with him. He wasn't sure he had it in him, to endure such agony again.

They threw him to the floor in a room devoid of furniture, the windows broken, the paint peeling. He knelt uncomfortably, trying to shift his weight away from his dodgy knee while also trying to relieve the strain on his left shoulder. _I'm too old for this,_ he thought as he catalogued his myriad aches and pains.

The door on the far side of the room swung open, and Anthony Wheeler made his appearance. Though he was still as neat and tidy, starched and ironed as he had been at the bank there was a wild sort of madness in his eyes. _Feral,_ Harry thought. _He looks feral._

"Right, Mr. Blackburn," Wheeler said as he approached. "I think it's time we had a little chat." Without warning Wheeler kicked him hard in the chest, and sent him hurtling back against the floor.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Apologies for the delay. I got sucked into a very good book, and couldn't make time for anything else until I finished it!**

* * *

 _These complete bloody imbeciles,_ Harry thought glumly. Wheeler had been questioning him for nearly an hour, prancing around the room, waving a massive knife in the air and threatening all sorts of violence, never delivering on any of it. It had taken less than a minute for Harry to determine what sort of nutter he was dealing with; Wheeler was under the impression that Harry really _was_ Richard Blackburn, despite not resembling the man in the least. While it seemed that Wheeler and his crew had taken the time to map out an entry and exit plan to the bank, they hadn't taken the time to so much as photograph their intended target. But the evidence of his captors' sloppy planning did not instill a great deal of hope in Harry; if anything, it frightened him all the more. These men were ill prepared and highly-strung, and he knew that was a dangerous combination. So he spoke in a soft, level voice, and tried to keep the conversation moving.

He had wondered, just for a moment, if he might be better off telling Wheeler who he really was. Perhaps the man would be so terrified, upon learning that he was up against the full might of Her Majesty's Security Services, that he would cut and run at the first possible opportunity. Harry disabused himself of that notion rather quickly, however. Wheeler was half-mad and in possession of rather a large knife, and Harry was trapped on the floor, his wrists and ankles bound, and his dodgy knee had locked up, banishing any thought of overpowering these lunatics. So Harry played the game.

"I'm telling you, it won't work," he said quietly as Wheeler continued to pace the room like some sort of rabid panther. "The vault requires four different layers of authentication. You need a fingerprint scan from one employee, a retinal scan from the manager, and two different passwords, only one of which I know." He was making this up out of whole cloth, inventing things as he went. It was dangerous, he knew; if he'd said only _the vault requires a fingerprint scan,_ he'd likely find himself short an index finger in a matter of seconds, and he was rather attached to his fingers, thank you very much. Of course, thinking of his fingers made him think of Ruth, and the way she moaned, when he thrust himself inside her. Not for the first time, he found himself rather regretting answering his mobile the night before. He could have delegated, and continued where he'd left off with Ruth, and maybe none of this would have happened. But he had answered the call, just as Ruth had told him to; she knew better than most what this job required of him.

It was all down to money, in the end. Wheeler had apparently Googled the word _usury_ and decided that all lending institutions were the devil's own handiwork. In a misguided attempt to right the wrongs done by those nefarious, money-grubbing heathens he had come up with some half-cocked scheme to rob as many banks as possible, as quickly possible, using whatever force necessary. What he planned to do with the money remained a mystery, though Harry sincerely doubted he'd be passing it out to the widows and orphans.

It was, quite simply, the stupidest plan Harry had ever encountered, and he'd foiled more than his fair share of madcap schemes in his time. Bank robbery wasn't usually Harry's forte, but Wheeler's religious rhetoric had twigged on MI-5's radar, and so here Harry sat, bleeding and sore and quite frankly furious on the floor of some dingy warehouse, when he could have been home, snogging Ruth senseless. All in all, this was not one of Harry's better days.

* * *

" _What can be more unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain, without plows? All those who give themselves up to this damnable culture shall reap only tares. Let us cut off these monstrous births of gold and silver; let us stop this execrable fecundity."_

Ruth rewound the tape, and played it again. She'd been at it for a few hours now, trawling through the depths of Greg Lawson's life, playing back bits of Anthony Wheeler's sermons, trying to put the pieces together. In a mad sort of way, she thought she understood what had drawn Wheeler off his pillar, his motivation for attacking Harry in the broad light of day. It seemed she'd been correct, after a fashion, in thinking that it all tied back to Greg Lawson. The plods had sent over Lawson's phone, and Tariq had quickly unlocked it, revealing a string of rather risqué messages between Lawson and Wheeler, the lunatic on the pillar. It would appear that in addition to being old friends, the pair were also erstwhile lovers, and despite all his pious claims to the contrary, Wheeler had not spent his time in the park standing on a pile of rock and considering the glory of God; while his followers slept, he had been furiously texting Lawson, and most of what he said made Ruth want to gag. The messages had been revealing in more ways than one; apparently, Lawson had done business with Richard Blackburn's bank, and owed them rather a lot of money. This had sent Wheeler into a spirited frenzy, and in the days before the attack on Harry, he'd spent much of his time railing against the practice of usury, or lending money and charging interest.

She played the tape a third time.

" _Let us stop this execrable fecundity,_ " Wheeler declaimed in his most dramatic voice, which in truth was hardly more than a nasally whine.

 _There's no way this man knows what fecundity means,_ she thought. No, she had listened to rather a lot of their would-be pillar-saint's ramblings, and most of what he'd said was incomprehensible bollocks. This particular passage, though, sounded more like something he was quoting than something he'd invented on the spot. Dutifully she turned, and typed the phrase into her computer.

As always, the internet delivered.

Apparently, Wheeler had stolen his entire speech from St. John Chrysostom, an early Eastern Christian ascetic. That made sense; Wheeler was modeling his manic behavior on the stylites, most of whom made their pillars in the Eastern fringes of the Roman Empire, and this St. John fellow had spent two years standing non-stop, even while he slept, resulting in rather a lot of health problems. _Perhaps he should have prayed harder,_ Ruth thought ungraciously.

She reached out, and shuffled through the papers on her desk, finally retrieving Greg Lawson's bank statements. He owed money to several different intuitions; _what if_ , Ruth wondered, _Blackburn's bank wasn't the only target?_ Wheeler had been obsessed with the sin of usury; what if he had decided to take vengeance on everyone who had abused his lover?

Ruth scooped up her phone, and rang Dimitri. "I think we're looking at multiple targets," she told him. "I'm texting you an address. Take a few plods, and go check it out. I'll send teams to the other locations."

"Yes ma'am," Dimitri said, somewhat cheekily, she thought, and rang off.

 _It's better than nothing,_ she told herself as she rose to go in search of Beth. At least while she was busy, she wasn't consumed with grief and fear over Harry's fate.

* * *

" _He that hath given forth his money upon usury, or hath taken increase, shall he live? He shall not live, saith the Lord,"_ Wheeler shrieked, his eyes mad, spittle flying from his fleshy lips to land on Harry's cheek.

Things were not going well for Harry, at present. Apparently, Wheeler thought that Harry – or, rather, Richard Blackburn – carried the keys to his bank's vault in his trouser pocket, and upon learning that he would not be able to simply walk in and empty the accounts, he had flown into a rage. Harry had the lacerations on his chest and arms to prove it. He was bleeding quite profusely just now, and lamenting the loss of one of his favorite shirts.

"Is that from something?" Harry asked in a resigned sort of voice. Wheeler was kneeling beside him, knife dangling from his fingertips, his face uncomfortably close to Harry's. For all the he had shaved and appeared to have cleaned himself up, Wheeler still smelled rather bad, and Harry wished he'd move away. The stench was making him dizzy.

"The prophet Ezekiel," Wheeler answered.

 _Ah, of course_ , Harry thought glumly. _The old ones are the best._

"The prophet Ezekiel says you shall not live, Mr. Blackburn," Wheeler continued, pressing the tip of his knife into Harry's thigh. "But I am giving you the chance to repent. Empty your vaults, enemy of Christ, and your soul will be cleansed before you enter eternity."

 _No, thank you,_ Harry thought. It would take more than that, he believed, to wash out the sins of his past, but he rather wisely kept that thought to himself.

"I've told you-" Harry began, but before he could finish, the entire warehouse erupted into a blaze of light, and through the shattered windows Harry could hear the thrumming of a helicopter. Drawing upon some previously undiscovered well of strength, Harry flung himself to the side, rolling out of reach of Wheeler and his knife. Before the nutter could make a move, a veritable army of gun-toting CO-19 officers burst in, Dimitri Levendis leading the pack. To a man, Wheeler's followers dropped to the floor and raised their arms in surrender, while Wheeler all but frothed at the mouth, dancing on the spot in impotent rage. Harry watched, trying not smile, as Dimitri waltzed right up to Wheeler, and punched him square in the face, dropping him to his knees and sending the knife skittering across the floor.

"All right, Harry?" Dimitri asked him as he subdued the raving lunatic on the floor.

"Never better," Harry answered, grinning.

* * *

Ruth had done it, in the end. As Dimitri rang off, Beth turned to stare out across the Grid, her eyes alighting on the petite woman currently huddled beneath a pile of paperwork, still dutifully scrolling through Anthony Wheeler's past speeches. It was a stroke of brilliance, Ruth's plan to check the banks; Beth's team had found a transit van full of unwashed loonies at the first place they'd checked, and once the nutters realized they'd been well and truly nabbed, they all began to sing like canaries. Beth had the location where Wheeler had taken Harry in hand within fifteen minutes of arriving at the bank, and Dimitri had just called to say that Harry was fine, and at this very moment he was on his way back to the Grid, ignoring all requests that he stop off at A&E on the way.

Oh, Beth was sure they would have stumbled across this lead in the end, but it was Ruth who had seen straight to the heart of the matter, who had accomplished in just over three hours what might have taken Beth and the rest twice as long to discover. It was Ruth's quick thinking that had no doubt saved Harry's life; according to Dimitri, the nutters had done a number on him before he was rescued. _What would have happened,_ Beth wondered, _if she weren't here?_

It seemed that Ruth could feel Beth's eyes upon her; she turned, and their gazes caught. Beth dragged herself to her feet, and made her way across the Grid.

"Harry?" Ruth asked, her heart in her eyes as she gazed unblinking at Beth.

"He's fine," Beth answered, noting the way Ruth's shoulders slumped with relief, the way her eyes shone all the brighter for knowing that her husband was safe. Whatever might have gone wrong between them in the past, it was clear that Ruth still loved Harry, very much, and Beth was thankful that they had managed to bring him back to his wife, battered and bruised though he might be. "He's on his way, Dimitri says he'll be here in about fifteen minutes."

Ruth nodded. "I'm going to kill him," she said, and then she began to laugh, a slightly hysterical sort of sound that frightened Beth, just a little. "I'm going to absolutely bloody murder him."


	11. Chapter 11

She was waiting for him in his office, when he came limping back onto the Grid. Beneath his suit jacket his shirt was in tatters and sticky with blood, but he had managed to hide the extent of his injuries from Dimitri and CO-19, wanting to avoid a trip to A&E if he could. It wasn't the first time he'd broken a rib or two, and he knew there was little the doctors could do for such an ailment. Rest, a bit of ice, and he'd be good as new…eventually. Though he had several lacerations courtesy of Wheeler's knife, he'd been cut up enough in the past to know what sort of wounds required stitching, and what sort could be treated with a plaster. The cuts on his torso were shallow, and he knew they'd scab over in time. There was no use, he thought, in wasting time in some dingy hospital. His only thoughts were of Ruth, and getting back to her as soon as he could. Harry knew that he had perhaps acted more rashly than was wise; there had been time enough for him to pull in other teams from the Section, to send a field agent in to meet with Wheeler and run surveillance on the op. He'd dismissed the notion of calling for backup for a myriad of reasons; the DG was riding him about the high operating cost of his Section, Wheeler and his cronies had seemed more mad than dangerous, and Harry had wanted, very much, to be a part of the action again. It was foolish, he knew that now, foolish to ignore Ruth's warnings and the instinct towards caution he'd developed over a lifetime of spying, but in the end the adrenaline and the excitement of the field had overridden his own better angels, and Harry had paid the cost in blood. He was lucky to be alive, and he knew it.

As he crossed the Grid he scanned the room, searching for Ruth, and found her sitting behind his desk. He nodded to Beth and Tariq, not pausing to speak to them, and continued on his way, one hand pressed gingerly to his side beneath his jacket, feeling carefully and trying to determine whether it was just the one rib he'd injured, or if any others were feeling a bit tender, as well.

"You're a sight for sore eyes," he said softly as he slid the door closed behind him. The closed door brought with it some semblance of privacy, though the blinds were open on the windows and he knew from experience that loud voices carried easily from this room to the four corners of the Grid. He hoped this wouldn't devolve into a shouting match; taking deep breaths was painful, just now, and all he wanted, all he had ever wanted, was to take her in his arms, to smell the familiar, earthy scent of his hair, to lose himself in the warmth and the softness of her.

There was very little about Ruth that was soft just now, however. Her eyes were hard as agates, and twice as mesmerizing. In one fluid movement she rose from his chair, her skirt swirling around her heavy black boots, and crossed the space between them until she was standing close enough for him to touch her. He _wanted_ to touch her, wanted to reach out and run his fingers through her soft dark hair, but he resisted; whatever had passed between them last night, he knew she was cross with him now, and besides, every time he lifted his right arm a sharp pain shot through his chest.

For a moment he thought she was going to strike him; she was fairly vibrating with anger, and in that instant he believed that should she choose to unleash her anger on him in such a way he would accept it without a hint of protest. Let her be cross, let her shout, let her rail against him for hours; at least that way he would know for a certainty that she still cared for him, that the thought of losing him still drove her nearly mad with grief.

She did not hit him, though; she reached up, and ran the pad of her thumb gently across his bottom lip, tracing the line where his skin had split beneath Wheeler's heavy blows.

"You're bleeding," she murmured, her brilliant eyes flickering back and forth as she studied his face, looking for other signs of injury. Harry pursed his lips, tenderly kissing her thumb where she touched him, and his heart fell as he watched her snatch her hand back as if she'd been burned.

"You don't know the half of it," he said with a sigh. A sigh he immediately regretted, as the pain lanced through his chest once more.

"Take your shirt off and sit down," she told him briskly, all trace of concern suddenly vanished from her tone. Despite the fact that his team were all gathered outside on the Grid with a perfect view of this intimate moment between Harry and his wife, he did as he was bid. He turned his back on the windows and carefully peeled off his jacket, biting his tongue to keep from swearing at the resultant pain. He set about unfastening his shirt buttons, watching with some amusement as Ruth opened the First Aid kit she'd rescued from the kitchen and brought to sit upon his desk. As he finally rid himself of the last remaining vestiges of his shirt (along with what little remained of his dignity) he eased himself onto the sofa by the window and smiled up at her, his Ruth.

 _We're still here,_ he thought faintly. Despite the rather traumatic way Harry had spent most of the day, he was still alive and mercifully in one piece, and Ruth was still here, still waiting for him, despite all the bitter words and vile recriminations they had hurled at one another over the last few years. She was still here; she had not returned to Oxford, had not left in a huff. She was _here_ , on the Grid where she belonged. She was _home._

"Jesus, Harry," Ruth gasped when she finally turned to face him. Self-consciously he raised his hands and ran his fingertips across the mottled bruising that marred the smooth plane of his chest.

"It's not as bad as it looks," he tried to reassure her. Ruth's face had gone deathly pale, but her eyes were reproachful, watchful, wary. _The eyes are the window to the soul,_ according to Shakespeare. _The eye is the light of the body,_ according to the Gospel Matthew. If that had ever been true of anyone, it was Ruth. If forced to pick a moment, a single, shining instant, in which he had first fallen in love with her, Harry would have to admit it was the day she came onto the Grid to interview for the analyst position, and he found himself staring into those eyes for the first time. So much had changed over the last eight years, not least of all Ruth herself, but those eyes remained the same. Magnificent, wretched, luminous, destructive; they were everything to him, for every time he looked at her, it seemed to him that he could see her very soul, shining in her eyes.

Carefully Ruth knelt at his feet, her skirt billowing around her, her posture that of a supplicant at the feet of a saint, though Harry knew who held the power here, and it was not him. She might kneel prone before him, but he was hers, without question, without reservation, without recourse. ' _Til death do us part._

"Lean back," she murmured, and so he did, closing his eyes as her gentle hands began to clean his wounds. Ruth took her time, disinfecting each cut before carefully covering it with a plaster, working in the same, methodical manner with which she approached every task, big or small. This was not the first time she had cared for him in such a way; she had chided him, in the past, for his rather cavalier attitude towards his own personal safety, but she was always there, ready to heal his battered heart even as she tended to the wounds of his flesh.

 _God help me, but I love this woman,_ Harry thought, trying not to wince as she applied a bit of pressure to his injured rib.

"You really should see a doctor," she told him, but her voice held no real conviction; he was not known for heeding such advice, and she who knew him so well knew better than to waste her breath asking for the impossible.

"I'll be all right," Harry answered.

This was nice, in a dangerous, heart-stopping sort of way; the brush of her hands against his skin, the weight of her elbows resting gently on his knees, the warmth radiating off of her as she knelt before him felt so right, so impossibly _right_ and _real_ and… _wonderful_ that he was very nearly holding his breath, wishing to prolong the contact between them for as long as he could, wishing that this moment would never end. Perhaps when she was finished he could brief the team, take her by the hand, lead her to the car, give up the keys and allow her to drive him home. Perhaps they could share a bath, as they had so often done in the past, and when they were both clean and warm they could curl up together in the bed that was always meant to be _theirs_ , and fall asleep, safe and well and happy, together.

On more than one occasion Ruth had demonstrated an uncanny knack for reading his mind, and she flaunted this particular skill once again as she said softly, "I'm going back to Oxford, Harry."

His eyes flew open, her words wounding him more completely than any blow he'd taken this day.

"You can't," he said, quickly amending this statement when he saw the dangerous flash of her eyes. "You can't be serious."

 _How could she? Why would she?_ He wondered in a daze. How could she still want to leave, after everything they'd shared last night, after they'd spilled the truth of their hearts to one another, after her held her and kissed her and drowned beneath the waves of his love for her? From the moment he'd lifted her up onto that table in the kitchen he had been convinced that she was coming home to stay. That whatever hurdles had obstructed them in the past had been cleared away, and that this was their opportunity to move forward, together. She had whimpered and moaned and thrust herself against him and he had read in each of those actions her desire for him, her longing to go back to the way things used to be.

Ruth lowered her gaze, carefully bandaging the last of the cuts, a thin red line low on his abdomen.

" _The past is a foreign country_ ," she quoted to him softly. "I can't go back, Harry. I can't keep living this way. Do you know how it felt, when I watched them take you?"

A single tear spilled artfully from behind her thick eyelashes, and though he longed to reach out, to brush it away with the pad of his thumb, he resisted, terrified that the slightest movement from him might send her running like a skittish deer.

"Ruth," he said, his voice strangled and harsh-sounding to his own ears.

"I love you, Harry," she whispered, leaning back on her heels to gaze up at him. _Christ_ , but she was beautiful, radiant in sorrow, transcendent in grief, shattering before him like a crystal vase upon a marble floor. "I love you, but it's not just about us, is it? It's this job, it's this place, it's what it does to you. To us. We've lost so much, you and I. And we both know I can't ask you to leave, any more than I can stand to stay here, and watch you die. I'm sorry."

She rose to her feet, the muscles and sinews of her body effortlessly propelling her away from him, the particulars of their movement hidden from his sight by her long skirt and soft cardigan. For a moment she hesitated, a look of such desperate longing coloring her features that it nearly brought tears to his eyes, and then she leaned towards him, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder, brushing a kiss against his cheek.

"Get some rest, Harry," she told him, and with a twirl of her skirt she turned, and slipped away from him.

Again.

Through all of this he had remained silent, hardly able to breathe, hardly able to think. How could he convince her? How could he possibly bring her back? Did he even want to, really? Ruth had chosen, in the end. She had chosen years ago, and just as he had done on the night she stormed out of their house, he had remained idle, and let her go. He never seemed to have the words, the words to console her, to counter her arguments, to vanquish the demons that haunted her steps. The power to persuade her remained beyond his grasp.

For a long time he stayed where he was, bare-chested, dying just a little inside as he imagined her every step carrying her farther and farther away from him. Ruth was gone, and she was never coming back.

* * *

 ***ducks flying objects* Don't worry! It's not over yet. Please bear with me, just a little while longer.**


	12. Chapter 12

When Ruth returned to her quiet little flat in Oxford the cats put on quite a show, mewling and twining themselves around her ankles and overall behaving as if they hadn't seen another living soul in days and were starving half to death, when Ruth knew for a fact that Mary had, at her request, fed them only just that morning. She indulged their pitiful whining for a moment, leaning over and scratching them each gently behind the ears. For the first time in two days, she took a deep, relaxing breath.

Or attempted to, at any rate.

Leaving Harry was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do; she knew this very well, having done it three times now. The first time they'd been pulled apart by circumstances beyond their control, and she'd been able to comfort herself with the memory of his kiss, fierce and wretched in sorrow, with the knowledge that she was leaving to keep him safe. The second time anger had propelled her forward, had made her bold as she sought to make a new life for herself, one far away from their world of shadows and darkness, a life in which she missed him, but was no longer breaking in half beneath the weight of the silence that had fallen between them. This time, though, things were different. This time, it was so much worse than she could ever have anticipated.

She loved him, that mule-stubborn man with the gorgeous eyes. She loved him, but she was terribly afraid, and the same fear that had sent her running back to Oxford still dogged her steps, still lingered on her shoulder, a cross she would bear all the rest of her days. Ruth had stayed in London, had waited for him to return, had tended to his hurts because she loved him, and she knew that if she did not look after him, no one would, least of all Harry himself. Once she was satisfied that he was well, or as well as he could be under the circumstances, she forced herself to turn and leave.

 _It's for the best,_ she told herself for the thousandth time. And for the thousandth time, the words failed to reassure her.

What Ruth feared was simply this; no matter how deep the love that bound them together, no matter how involved their history, she was desperately afraid that they simply were not meant to be happy together. They had tried before, and they had failed. Though they had aired their grievances and fallen into one another's arms once more, she could not shake the sense that the same darkness was waiting to swallow them at the first opportunity. And how much worse would it hurt, she wondered, if she allowed herself to rejoin Harry in London, only to wake six months later and find a stranger sleeping beside her? How much worse would it hurt, she wondered, if they found a way to truly be together only to have him taken from her, killed by a bullet or a bomb or some other even more unthinkable horror? Surely it was better for both of them to close that chapter of their lives, to look back fondly on one another, but to remove the power they each held to the wound the other more completely than any weapon yet devised by man. At least, that's what she tried to tell herself.

This argument was not particularly convincing, especially once she found herself curling up to sleep alone beneath her crisp white sheets. When she rolled onto her side and turned to face the empty pillows beside her, imagining the head that could have lain there, that should have lain there, with her always, as they had sworn to one another long ago.

There was no comfort to be found living like this, cold and alone. The idea that she had walked away as much for him as for herself did not soothe the ache in her heart. There in the darkness she thought of Harry, gingerly easing himself into bed, wondering what went wrong, wondering if she'd told him the truth about why she'd left. Ruth had expected some resistance from him, but he had not protested, choosing instead to sit idly by and watch her leave in silence. _Perhaps that's what he wanted after all,_ she told herself as the first tears began to fall.

* * *

The next day she rose, dressed in her usual uniform of long skirt and dark cardigan, fed her cats, drank her tea by the window in the kitchen, and set off to give her first lecture of the morning. It was an introductory course on ancient mythologies for undergraduates, most of them cheerful and enthusiastic, if a bit bleary-eyed and unconvinced as to the significance of the material. Most of them thought it was a bit of a lark, all those stories about Zeus descending from Olympus and molesting unsuspecting women who were just trying to have a bath in peace. Her students did not know, could not have known, that Ruth's knowledge of these stories had saved the nation from utter ruin on more than one occasion, and she could not fault them for their ignorance in that regard.

As usual she took up her post at the front of the class, flipping through her notes one final time as the room around her swelled with the buzz of her students, chatting happily away. There was a certain comfort to be found in routine, and she tried to wrap herself up in it this morning. The rows of desks, the brightly colored backpacks, the notebooks, the sea of shining, hungover faces spread out before. She would give her lecture, she would go up to her office, she would respond to a few emails, and then she would have lunch with Mary. There was nothing spectacular about it, but perhaps, with time, this life would prove to be a balm to her weary soul. Then again, perhaps not.

Once she had her thoughts in order, she turned to face them, fully prepared to spend the next hour or so discussing Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ until all their eyes glazed over.

"Good morning," she said, and the room rumbled slightly with her students' response. Ruth smiled, a bit sadly. There was nothing life or death about this, nothing chaotic, nothing dangerous, nothing scary. There was also nothing particularly exciting about it, and not for the first time she found herself wondering if it were possible to die of boredom.

"Right," she said, trying to rally. "Ovid."

She turned to look at the book she held in her hands, fully prepared to dive right into her lecture, but what she found there stopped her short. In her haste to leave the house that morning, she had, somehow, taken the wrong book with her. It was not _Metamorphoses_ she held; it was _Amores._

Her heart gave a dangerous little flutter in her chest. Though she could feel the curious stares of her students she found she could not move, could not speak. She simply stared at the book, thinking. Thinking about the man who had given it to her, thinking about the tragedy and the irony and the fallacy of love, thinking about what it meant, to fall so completely for the wrong person. She was thinking about history, about the ties that bind, about the power of fear. And, quite suddenly, she realized something.

Perhaps it was dangerous, to love a man who served the country rather than his own heart. Perhaps it was a gamble, to give all of oneself to another, to allow one's heart to find a home in the fragile hands of another person. Perhaps it hurt, to love. Perhaps all of this was true, but it seemed to her that she had never been given a more precious gift than that of love, and to squander it, to hide it away, to store her heart upon a shelf in the name of keeping it safe, suddenly seemed to Ruth to be the height of folly. Yes, Harry might die. Yes, Harry might one day cease to be the man she loved. But for the last eight years he had remained steady and true, and every atom in her body cried out for him.

 _The hell with this,_ she thought.

"Right," she said again, clearing her throat, startled by how raw her own voice sounded. "Actually, we're done for the day. Feel free to stay, if you need the time to study."

The sea of twenty-somethings spread out before her began to sway back and forth uneasily, murmuring softly to one another. She saw one young man leap from his desk and practically run through the door, apparently quite relieved to have been given permission to flee. _I bet he didn't do the reading,_ she thought wildly.

And without another word she gathered up her things and followed him, bolting from the room.

* * *

"Miss Bailey?" the security guard said, his voice perplexed and slightly tinny as it echoed through the briefing room.

"Yes?" she asked impatiently. She and Dimitri had been in the middle of interviewing a new candidate to join their team, an agent from Section A who was eager for a secondment. Beth wasn't convinced the young man sitting across from her would be a good fit for the team, but she still didn't appreciate the interruption.

"I apologize, ma'am, it's just…Lady Pearce is here, again."

"Right," Beth said. "Um…send her down, then."

Only the day before Harry had told them that he thought they'd seen the last of Ruth and yet, here she was, storming back onto the Grid. To be quite honest, Beth was rather relieved; she'd never seen Harry looking quite as forlorn as he did when he made that particular announcement.

"Maybe she's left something behind?" Dimitri suggested, reading Beth's confusion in her face.

 _Like her husband?_ Beth thought, but she did not voice that particular thought aloud. She rose from her chair, and left Dimitri alone with the new recruit, making her way out onto the Grid to greet Lady Pearce as she came racing through the pods.

Ruth came racing into view, stuttering to a halt there on the threshold by the pods. Her brilliant eyes flitted towards Harry's office, and a dark expression over took her features when she saw that he was not currently in residence.

"Ruth?" Beth asked, taking a tentative step towards her. Ruth seemed to fairly vibrate with nervous energy, and when she turned her gaze onto Beth, Beth saw that her eyes were sort of wild.

"Harry?" Ruth asked. Strange that, Beth thought; though they'd only known one another for a bare two days, Rut had always been very courteous in her dealings with the team. Today, apparently, she did not have time for the niceties.

"He's not in," Beth explained. "The DG got wind of what happened yesterday, and sent him home."

Ruth did not say another word; she simply turned on her heel and dashed off again, leaving Beth, if possible, even more confused than she had been before. Beth just shrugged her shoulders; whatever was going on with Ruth and Harry was certainly none of her business, but she couldn't help hoping that they would sort themselves out. If anyone ever deserved to be happy, she thought, it was the two of them.

* * *

"Come on, come on, come on," Ruth chanted quietly to herself, practically dancing on the spot in impatience. She'd taken the train from Oxford to London, a taxi to Thames House and a second one to Harry's, only to arrive and find him not answering the door. Twice already she'd rung the bell, but no answer had come from within. Through the thin curtains on the windows, curtains Ruth herself had picked out years ago, she could see that the house beyond was in darkness.

 _I suppose that's what I get,_ she thought glumly, _for not calling first._

Ruth heaved a sigh, and sat down on the front step, tucking her skirt beneath her legs. Having made up her mind that leaving Harry was in fact the worst possible choice she could have made, Ruth was resolved to wait as long as was necessary in order to see him again. There was no guarantee that he would be amenable to the idea of them giving it another go; after all, Ruth had left him twice now, and she knew he was not a particularly forgiving man. He couldn't be, in his line of work. Betrayal always hit him hard, and she was under no illusions; she knew that she had betrayed him. That she had done it for love of him, that she had been motivated by a desire to spare them both undue pain, did not seem to her to be a particularly strong argument.

So she waited, thinking about the man she loved, thinking about every mistake they had ever made, every cruel word they had ever spoken to one another. She thought about lazy Sunday mornings, making love in the pre-dawn light; Harry was always rather amorous, first thing in the morning. And when they were finished he would slip downstairs to fix them both a bit of breakfast, bringing her tea in bed as if she were a Queen and not an overworked, underpaid analyst. Many Sundays had passed like that, in a haze of quiet domesticity and the bliss of simply sharing space with one another, and she found herself wishing, with everything she had, for a lifetime of Sundays to spend with him.

As the minutes turned to hours, Ruth's hopes turned to doubts once more. There was no sign of him, and when she did eventually try to ring him, she was disheartened to discover that his mobile had been turned off. Wherever he had gone it was clear that he did not want to be reached, but Ruth could not shake the feeling that he was trying to avoid _her_ specifically.

 _Maybe it really is too late,_ she thought as she finally rose, stiff and cold and rather hungry, having sat on his front steps for so long. _Maybe some wrongs can't be undone._

With a heavy heart she called for another taxi. It was time for her to go home.


	13. Chapter 13

In her heart Ruth harbored a small, desperate little hope that once she arrived back in Oxford she would find Harry loitering outside her flat, much as she had just done to him. _Isn't that how it goes in those old films?_ She thought as she trudged down the pavement, keeping her eyes firmly focused on the ground in front of her feet, wanting to delay the inevitable, wanting to exist in this moment when Harry _could_ be waiting for her for as long as possible. There would be a sort of romantic poetry to it, she thought as she continued on her way; a certain wry irony in her having sat for hours on his front steps while he was sitting on the pavement outside her flat, each of them hungry for the other, each of them waiting, finally on the same page, still miles apart.

Eventually Ruth reached her flat, and choked back a sigh of bitter disappointment. Harry was not waiting for her. He had not rung her, and when she slipped inside she found no notes, no flowers, no sign that he had been there at all. _I should have known better than to hope,_ she thought as she set about feeding her little cats and preparing supper for herself. For why should he come to her at all, when she had told him so plainly that she didn't want to be with him any more? When she had drawn so close to him, only to erect the barriers that had previously separated them, to return to this abysmal state of perpetual loneliness in which she had decreed that they must both spend the rest of their days? Maybe he had gone out and found a woman, the way he used to do in his younger days, a warm, willing body, a gentle smile with no strings attached. And could she fault him, if he had? After all, Ruth herself was the one who had ended their relationship, the one who had cut him loose.

 _Perhaps I ought to do that myself,_ she mused, though she knew she'd never follow through on it. Ruth was much too old and much too broken to waste her time and her energy going in search of some easy, emotionless fling. And she rather thought Harry was, too, but still, the idea of him falling into another woman's arms lingered, attacking her at every turn, leaving her bitter and sad and more than a little frustrated. She had complicated things, she knew, had thought too much the way she always did, had let her fear run away with her, with disastrous results.

Would she ever get the chance to explain this to him? She wondered. How would she ever even begin? She had decided to leave him and decided to come home again in the span of less than twenty-fours, and she knew for a man like Harry, steadfast and strong, unwavering in his beliefs, such an abrupt about-face would be nigh on incomprehensible. The truth was simply this; it had taken leaving him, facing her empty life once more, to make Ruth realize just how terrible a mistake leaving him really was. Would that be enough to warm Harry's heart towards her? She had no way of knowing.

 _I could ring him tomorrow,_ she thought glumly as she shuffled through the steps of her evening routine. Her courage was fading quickly, though. It was one thing to go rushing onto the Grid, to fling herself into his arms and beg his forgiveness; doggedly pursuing him, forcing herself to go through with what promised to be a rather uncomfortable conversation was something else. It lacked the drama, for one thing, and for another, she could not shake the sense that Harry was deliberately keeping away from her. With good reason, she knew, but the fear was back, sharp and bitter in the back of her throat. This time, she was not afraid that they would not be happy together. She was afraid because she knew they would be, and because a part of her worried that it was already too late.

* * *

The days passed slowly, but then, they always did in Oxford. She had lunch with Mary, she played with her little cats, she marked up her students' papers and endured the agony of the weekly staff meeting. She spent Sunday alone, curled up on her sofa, reading _Wuthering Heights_ while rain lashed against the windows and she tried her damnedest not to think of Harry, and how much warmer she would be if he were there beside her, his arm wrapped securely around her shoulders. This was to be her life now, the life she had chosen, the one in which they were apart, always. It had a simple elegance to it, her quiet, solitary life, her books, her students, all the morose moping about with wine glass firmly in hand. There was no joy, though, no raucous laughter, no dancing round the dining table, no late-night phone calls in which the fate of the world was decided.

She woke on Thursday morning, careful to pack her bag with the correct books this time, taking care over her appearance. Ruth had not seen this particular batch of students last Thursday, when she had abruptly walked out on them, and she knew they would still be whispering about her departure. Upon her return from her fruitless trip to London she had sent out an email, part bland apology, part firm reassurance that they would in fact be meeting the following week, but other than that she had offered no explanation. By nature they were a curious lot, and she knew she had behaved in a rather dramatic fashion. This time, she was determined to deliver her overdue lecture on _Metamorphoses,_ and not to give them any cause to think her interesting.

Before she made her way to the lecture hall, Ruth stopped off at her office to discard her bag and have a cup of tea. As usual, Mary came floating through the doorway, her trademark smile firmly in place. Ruth had divulged very little about either of her trips to London but Mary, in typical Mary fashion, had poked and prodded at her until she had been forced to confess that she was visiting her (soon-to-be) ex-husband. This had set Mary off on a diatribe about how Ruth's ex was a tosser, despite Ruth having never spoken a word about what it was that drove them apart. Likely Mary was just trying to be supportive, but her attempts at feminine camaraderie rubbed Ruth the wrong way, and she was in no mood to endure them now.

"Cheer up, love," Mary chided her when she caught sight of her face that morning. "You've been so glum since you came back from London. I think you need a girl's night out."

Ruth could imagine nothing worse than a girls' night out with Mary; no doubt it would involve several of Mary's catty friends from other departments and one of those clubs where the music was so loud that Ruth couldn't hear herself think, the drinks all tinged a faint blue color and exponentially overpriced.

"I'm fine," Ruth told her, abandoning her tea in favor of escaping to the lecture hall, leaving Mary staring forlornly after her. Ruth was most definitely _not_ fine, but getting drunk with Mary and her horrible friends was unlikely to improve her disposition.

The minute she stepped into the lecture hall her personal troubles began to fade; she took a seat at the front of the room, propped her feet up on the edge of the desk, and began to flip through _Metamorphoses,_ thinking about how every culture in the world had its own creation myths, thinking about all the disparate strands of thought and hope that bound together all of mankind, throughout human history. There was something comforting in the knowledge that since the dawn of time (regardless of when exactly one believed that was), humans had been asking the same questions. It seemed to Ruth that sometimes the question was more important than the answer, anyway.

Gradually her students began to shuffle in, and Ruth assumed a more scholarly pose, crossing her legs demurely and smiling at whichever student happened to catch her eye. They weren't so bad, really; a bit young, a bit naïve, but for the most part well-intentioned. _And so were we all, at one time or another,_ she thought sadly. Ruth had been young once, and so determined to do good, to make a difference. _Perhaps I ought to try a bit harder with them,_ she mused as she stared out at the sea of faces shining brightly before her. Yes, teaching was not exactly a matter of life and death, but she could have an impact on these young people, could help guide their steps. At the very least, she could do as her own teachers had done, and quietly steer the most promising candidates towards the Security Services recruiting departments. Most of their incoming agents were Oxbridge educated; perhaps if Ruth herself put forth a few likely names, she might feel better about the future of the Services. Then again, she thought, perhaps she ought to spare her students such a life, and recommend they become teachers instead.

"Good morning," Ruth said, rising smoothly from behind the desk once she'd determined that the time had come to begin. She glanced down at the book in her hands, feeling a pang of sadness when she remembered standing there at this time the week before, remembered how she'd felt upon seeing _Amores_ instead. At the time, finding that book in her hands had felt like nothing short of divine inspiration, as if the universe itself were softly whispering to her _go to him._ She had done, and what had it brought her, in the end, except more sorrow, more uncertainty? _I should have known better than to trust to hope,_ she told herself.

"Right," she said. "Ovid."

But before she could begin, she was interrupted by someone slipping through the door at the back of the room. A few of the more engaged students noticed the way her face paled and followed her line of sight, craning their heads as discreetly as they could in order to get a look at the man who now stood leaning against the door, staring down at Ruth.

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her hands trembled so badly that she had to turn, and deposit her battered copy of _Metamorphoses_ on the desk, lest she accidently drop it. Her heart pounded madly in her chest, the rush of blood in her ears drowning out the billowing wind of whispers that fluttered all around her.

 _Harry._

For reasons entirely unknown to her, Harry stood at the back of the lecture hall, his arms crossed over his chest, a soft smile gracing his features. He wore a dark shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, his sleeves rolled back and his forearms on display. For one wild instant Ruth wondered what he was doing wandering around without a coat on with winter fast approaching, but then that question faded away, lost beneath the waves of her confusion and her hope and her desperate yearning for him. She twisted her hands together, unable to speak, unable to move, hardly able to breathe as she watched him, watching her. Why had he come? How could she convince him to stay? What were they supposed to do now?

Before she was able to answer any of those questions, Harry pushed himself upright, and began to walk slowly towards her, passing through the rows of desks, her students' eyes fixed upon him as he went. For his part he did not seem to notice them; his eyes were trained on her, and she saw the hunger, the question, the hope that filled his gaze.

"Right," she said faintly, addressing the rest of the room. "That's enough for today, you can go."

At first none of them moved, watching Harry's progress with interest; none of them, save the same young man who had bolted first the week before. Once again, he was the first one out the door.

When Harry reached her, she took a deep, ragged breath, tears forming at the corners of her eyes though she tried very hard not to let them fall.

"Hello, Ruth," he said softly, his voice low and warm and meant for her ears only. Her field of vision had narrowed down to a single point; there was nothing else in her world now save for this, save for him, this man she loved more than anything or anyone else. Beyond them her students had begun to make a very slow progress out the door, clearly interested to see how this would play out while also very much wanting to avoid the inevitable bollocking should they be caught out eavesdropping.

"Harry," Ruth breathed.

He reached out, and ran his thumb across the rise of her cheekbone, gently wiping away her tears.

"Beth said you wanted to see me," he told her.

Ruth just nodded, trying so very hard to keep herself from falling apart, her whole body shaking from the strain of holding the pieces of her heart together, to keep them from piercing through her skin, leaving her raw and exposed. She took one small step towards him, trying to prepare herself to speak, but she never got the chance. As she moved towards him, Harry smiled, and took a step himself, reaching out to envelope her in his arms, and she collapsed against him, burying her face in his chest and soaking his shirt-front with her tears. For his part Harry simply held her and let her weep, running his hands in gentle circles across her back.


	14. Chapter 14

Until the moment he saw her face, Harry had been uncertain as to whether or not he had made the right decision. For the last week he'd been holed up in Malcolm's little cottage by the sea, giving his ribs time to heal, drinking late into the night with his oldest friend and ignoring the incessant ringing of his mobile. It was a bit of much needed downtime for him, and he was glad he'd done it. With Ruth gone, this time for good (or so he'd thought), Harry had done a bit of pondering, thinking about his life, the choices he'd made, the good moments and the bad. Working for Five had shaped him, had made him into the man he was, and during the nights he spent sitting on Malcolm's sofa, drinking Malcolm's very fine scotch, he'd been forced to ask himself if he was content with his lot in life. If this world of darkness and swirling intrigue was enough for him.

The answer was a resounding _no;_ though he was proud of his accomplishments, and for the most believed that he had been successful professionally, there was something missing. _Someone_ missing. He knew why Ruth had left; spending less than two days in one another's company could not possibly have undone the damage he'd caused during the last year of their marriage, when he had held himself aloof from her and watched her trust, her faith in him slowly crumble away into nothingness. Yes, he had been hurt, but then so too had she, and he had done nothing to comfort her. Knowing the darkness, the pain that filled her past, he had let his own pride get in the way of their marriage, and he had lost her for it. Of course she had left; he had given her no reason to think that things would be different, this time around.

By the time he left Malcolm's cottage, Harry had realized two things. One was that it was very likely too late for him to salvage his relationship with Ruth. She had made her choice, and he would abide by it, knowing that begging her for a second chance would do more harm than good; Ruth had never responded well to pressure in her personal life. The second realization was this: while it might have been too late for him to be happy with Ruth, he still had two children, two children he loved, and who deserved better from their father. Catherine had been offered a job as a producer with the BBC, and was making noises about coming home to stay for good. Graham remained as much an enigma as he had always been, but Harry truly believed that, with a bit of work, it might be possible for him to have a proper relationship with his son for the first time since the boy had been born.

Harry Pearce returned from Malcolm's cottage intent on retirement.

He had served well and faithfully, and the time had come for him to rest. He understood now what Malcolm had meant, when he himself had tendered his resignation; _I'm tired, Harry,_ Malcolm had told him. Harry was tired, too.

Before he could put his plans in motion, however, there were things that needed to be done. He typed up his letter of resignation and walked into Thames House on Thursday morning fully intent upon delivering his notice to Towers as soon as the morning briefing had concluded. But then, a funny thing happened.

Beth accosted him as he was making his way from the pods towards his office; she had reached out and stopped him with a hand on his arm, the familiarity of the gesture catching him off guard for a moment. And then she had said _Ruth came looking for you last week._

Something deep inside Harry's chest had snapped at those words. He couldn't say how it was but in that moment he suddenly knew exactly why she had come. Ruth's things had all been moved out of their house years ago, and they were set to have a meeting with their solicitors the following week; there was nothing more she needed from him, unless, of course, what she'd come looking for was Harry himself. He was not a particularly spiritual man, having spent the better part of the last three decades fighting back against religious fanaticism and delving into the very worst parts of human nature, but when Beth murmured those quiet words to him he felt as if the universe itself were speaking to him. _Go to her._

And so he did. He spun on his heel and departed, making a beeline for his car. He set out for Oxford at once; it did not matter, he told himself, if the powers that be were cross with him for leaving his post. A woman called Erin Watts had been brought in from another section to cover for him in his absence, and he did not doubt that she would continue to serve quite well in that capacity for another day or two. And anyway, what were they going to do? They could fire him, if they liked; he'd already decided to leave.

Once he arrived in Oxford he experienced a moment of crippling doubt; what if he was wrong about her intentions? What if she didn't want to see him at all? He had been wrong in the past, where Ruth was concerned, had misinterpreted her words to both their detriment. A part of him was deeply worried that he would come stumbling across her only to discover that she wanted nothing more to do with him, and he feared for the state of his heart, should he receive such a crushing final blow.

Before he could talk himself out of it he made his way up to her office. Harry was only somewhat ashamed to admit that once she'd gotten settled in two years ago he had visited the university and identified where she was working, though he had never worked up the nerve to go and visit her. On this particular day he made his way straight up to the little office that had become hers, but was disappointed to find it empty. He had been preparing himself to sit down in one of the little chairs across from her desk to wait patiently until she returned, but fate intervened in the form of a rather dowdy-looking woman who poked her head through the door only a moment after Harry stepped inside.

"Looking for Ruth?" she'd asked him. Harry had nodded, and found himself on the receiving end of a rather appraising sort of look.

"She's got a lecture this morning," the woman explained. "Starts in about five minutes."

Harry reckoned that five minutes would be enough time, time enough for him to look at his wife and read her face, to with a single glance determine whether there was any glimmer of hope left for the pair of them. He turned on the patented Pearce charm, and wheedled the location of the lecture hall out of Ruth's colleague. He took a wrong turning or two along the way, but eventually, he'd found the right room. Apparently his five minutes were up, given the fact that when he slipped through the door Ruth had been on her feet and preparing to dive into her lecture; for a moment he simply stood there against the door, smiling to see her looking so comfortable, so natural in a teacher's pose.

Harry had always thought Ruth would make a fine teacher. She had such a love of learning, but more than that, she loved to share the things she knew, loved to guide the field agents and the junior analysts through each unfathomable tangle, her face lighting up like a child at Christmas time whenever her pupils finally caught on. In fact, Harry had been so busy smiling at her, so lost in his contemplation of how very lovely she was and how very badly he wanted her, that he did not immediately consider the possible ramifications of his having stormed into her lecture so unexpectedly.

The moment her eyes locked on his face, hope and desire flamed together in his chest, like two creeping vines swirling round and round one another, rising higher and higher until he was almost choking with need of her. Even from that distance he could see her hands shaking, could see the shimmer of tears in her diamond-bright eyes, and in that moment, he knew. All was not lost.

As he made his way towards her, growing bolder with each step, it seemed to him that everything around them had faded away into nothingness; he forgot about her students the moment she dismissed them, forgot about the way his heart had ached when she'd left him alone in his office, forgot about all the bitter words she'd spoken to him, and he to her. All that existed for him now was her, was this, was hope and need and possibility.

When he folded her into his arms, when he wrapped himself around her and felt her shaking in his embrace, felt the warmth of her tears soaking through his shirt, he found at peace, for the first time in a very long while. He _had_ done the right thing, in coming to see her today, and it seemed to him that whatever happened next, they would be all right, so long as they stood together, and never apart, never again.

Finally her tears subsided, and Harry leaned back, brushing her hair back from her face and dropping a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"All right, Ruth?" he asked her softly.

She shook her head, taking a deep breath. Her tears were spent, and now she seemed to him to be more weary than anything else.

"I'm so sorry, Harry," she breathed, her fingers fisting in the back of his shirt, holding him close against her. "I thought I couldn't handle it, being with you, dealing with the secrets and the lies. I was wrong. What I can't bear, what I can't live with, is being apart from you. Tell me it's not too late, Harry," she begged him, her eyes pleading with him, her bottom lip trembling, just asking to be kissed.

He leaned in close to her, his lips brushing the shell of her ear as he murmured, "It's not too late, Ruth."

She made a soft, happy sort of noise at that, and Harry smiled. Gently he cupped her face in his hand, tilting her head back so that he could look into her eyes, those eyes he loved so well, those eyes that knew him, that loved him, just as he was, and damn all the rest.

There was nothing for it then but to kiss her, and so he did, using the hand still cupping her cheek to guide her towards him; for her part, Ruth pushed herself up onto her tiptoes to meet him halfway, her lips warm and soft and glorious beneath his own. Harry had all but given up hope of ever holding her, ever tasting her again, and so he savored each second of contact between them, the heat of her, pressed in close against him, the little sound she made, deep in the back of her throat, when he caught her bottom lip between his teeth. This was _right_ , this was where he belonged, where she belonged, where _they_ belonged, and whatever happened next, they would face it, together.

Still he kissed her, spurred on by the reckless joy that filled him as she ran her hands along the smooth plane of his back, as he reached down and cupped her bum in his hands, squeezing just a little and smiling when she laughed, a shocked, surprised little sound that bubbled out of her, causing them to part from their kiss, panting and grinning at one another. He ran his fingers through her hair, delighting in the softness of it and the softness of her eyes as she watched him, looking at him as she had not done for two long years. In her eyes he saw the love she held for him, saw his wife as she had been before it all went wrong, and in her eyes he saw a future for them, a life and a love and a joy they could share, always.

Perhaps she saw something similar, when she gazed upon his face, for she reached out to him once again, her hand on the back of his neck drawing him down towards her, so that once again they were kissing, their tongues sliding together, lips pressed tight one to the other. Harry guided her back, and before he even really considered the potential consequences, he lifted her gently onto the desk at the front of the lecture hall, her legs wrapping around his waist in an instant, drawing him in closer to her. Standing there between her thighs, lost in the heat and the beauty and the rapture of her, his heart nearly stopped beating all together when she tore her lips from his and drew him closer still, whispering softly, _"_ Welcome home, Harry."

And he _was_ home, for wherever he went, whatever he did, his heart rested in her hands.


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: This chapter is (very) M-rated.**

* * *

Ruth was lost, utterly and completely lost, in the warmth and the staggering passion of Harry's kiss. For years now she had kept her love, her need of him safely hidden, walled up behind a dam of her own making, deep inside her heart. The first brush of his lips against her own had sent those fortifications tumbling down, and she had been swept away in a torrent of hope and desperate longing. The more he kissed her, the more he held her, the more she craved him; she had forgotten where they were, had forgotten all her carefully assembled reasons for leaving him behind. All that remained was Harry, warm and strong and solid, standing confidently between her thighs, his hands rucking up her skirt, his tongue brushing against her own insistently.

Were it not for the rather sudden appearance of Ruth's friend Mary, they might have gone quite a bit further than common decency allowed; as it was, Mary came slipping through the door at the back of the lecture hall, and cleared her throat rather obnoxiously.

At the sound Ruth tore her lips from Harry's, gasping slightly as she stared over his shoulder, her face flushing hot the moment she realized they'd been caught. Harry, trying very hard not to laugh, kept his hands resolutely wrapped around her thighs beneath her skirt, his face buried in the crook of her shoulder.

"Hi," Ruth said rather inanely. Mary gaped at her, no doubt shocked at having discovered her in such a compromising position, locked in a passionate clinch with a stranger.

 _Oh God, this is going to be all over the office in an hour,_ she thought glumly. Even so, having Harry here, knowing he still loved her, knowing there was still a chance for them, had made this moment so sweet that she found she could not really be bothered about what her coworkers (and indeed, her students) might have to say about her. What did it matter, in the end? Let them say that Ruth loved her husband so much that she very nearly let him shag her on a desk; it would be no more than the truth, and she was no longer ashamed to admit that she loved this man, that she had chosen him, that they belonged together.

"Paul Davies said you'd dismissed your lecture early again. I came to see if you were all right," Mary said, raising a sardonic eyebrow at Ruth.

"Um," Ruth said, blushing all the harder. _Christ_ , but this was awkward, and Harry was no bloody help at all; his attempts at containing his laughter had failed, and he was chuckling outright now, wrapped up in the circle of her arms, his warm breath ghosting across her collarbone and leaving goosebumps in its wake. "Right. No, I…I'm fine. We're fine. Everything is fine."

At this Harry leaned back in her arms, casting a single, incredulous look at her, as if to say _is that really the best you can do?_ She fought the urge to roll her eyes at him, but before she could give into the temptation, he squeezed her thighs lightly and disentangled himself from her, turning in one smooth movement to face Mary, the patented Pearce charm turned up to a power of ten.

"I'm afraid that's my fault," he said smoothly, smiling warmly at Mary, whose frank, slightly patronizing air faltered somewhat as she returned his grin in a bemused sort of way. "Ruth's just agreed to marry me again, and I thought we needed to celebrate."

"Well…er…congratulations, I suppose," Mary stammered. _Is she actually blushing?_ Ruth thought, flabbergasted. _That man really can charm the birds out of the trees._ "Just, best not do that here, yes?" Mary suggested pointedly.

"Too right," Harry agreed. He turned back to Ruth and wrapped one arm around her waist, gently sliding her off the desk and onto her feet. "We were just leaving, weren't we, darling?"

 _Oh, now that's laying it on a bit thick._

"I'm going to kill you," Ruth murmured exasperatedly.

"Right. Well…um. See you tomorrow, then?" Mary asked, and before Ruth could answer, she turned on her heel and fled. Ruth looked up at Harry, and found him grinning down at her, and though she had intended to at least _pretend_ to be cross with him, she found the pretense impossible to maintain when he gave her that sweet, little-boy smile. She leaned up on her tiptoes, and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Let's go home, Harry," she sighed. "Before you get me into any more trouble."

"As you wish, Lady Pearce," he answered whimsically.

They made their way out of the lecture hall together, Harry's arm around her waist, bright, somewhat daft grins plastered on both of their faces.

* * *

In a way Harry was grateful for the interruption of Ruth's frumpy little friend; as much as he had enjoyed their frenzied snog there in the lecture hall, he was looking forward to a much more thorough – and much more private – celebration back at her flat. He led Ruth down to his car, and they rode along together, Ruth's hand resting lightly on his thigh, her soft, honey-rich voice quietly murmuring directions to him as he drove. The day felt like nothing so much as a dream; it was difficult to imagine that only a few short hours before Harry had gone walking onto the Grid, convinced he would never again have the chance to hold Ruth in his arms. But his fortunes had changed and he was all the happier for it, and riding in the car restored some sense of normalcy, some balance to the upheaval that had gripped him earlier. This was something they had done many, many times before, he behind the wheel, she gently guiding him, and it reminded him of all the little things they had shared during their marriage. Reminded him of lazy Sunday mornings and tense commutes to Thames House, reminded him of the occasionally awkward, always entirely too brief dinners they'd shared with Catherine, and the peace and the joy of falling asleep wrapped around Ruth. This was right, and it was real, and he was, for once, feeling rather content.

"I've decided to retire," he told her as they drew ever nearer to her flat. The hand resting on his thigh tensed, and she turned to look at him sharply; though he kept his gaze firmly on the road, he could feel the weight of her eyes upon him. That, too, was familiar, and welcome.

"Are you sure?" she asked carefully. Even without the benefit of seeing her face he knew that the gears in her mind were turning at a breakneck pace, that she was trying to determine his motivation for making such a declaration, trying to determine whether this was a godsend for them, or just another reason for her to feel guilty. "Turn left, here," she added quickly.

Harry negotiated the turn before giving his response. "I am. I have done my duty, Ruth, and I think it's best I leave now, before I lose myself completely. I want to spend more time with my children, and with you. I want to wake in the morning and not wonder whether anyone will die because of my decisions. I made the wrong call on that last operation, and I've got the broken ribs to prove it. It's time for me to step back."

Through the corner of his eye, he saw her nod in understanding. "Plus, there are some rumblings about a coalition of Russians coming to town, and I want to be well away before that happens," he added darkly. Towers had intimated to him that his presence would be required in dealing with the pending Russian visit, but the very thought of it left the taste of bile in his mouth. That chapter of his life was closed, and he had no intention of revisiting it. Towers and the rest could go hang, as far as Harry was concerned; he never wanted to speak to another Russian again, and would gladly live out the rest of his days pretending the entire country had simply ceased to exist.

"I do know how you feel about the Russians," Ruth murmured in response. Before they were wed he had told her the truth about the time he'd spent there, Elena and the whole bloody mess. Though she'd been quite cross at first, Ruth had eventually confessed that she was grateful to him for telling her the truth, all of it, and they neither one of them spoke of it again. That was the past, and he was well and truly finished with it.

She guided him into a space outside her building, and Harry's heart began to flutter, just a little, as he stepped out of the car and joined her on the pavement. Ruth had sought sanctuary here, he mused as he took her hand and allowed her to lead him up the stairs. This was the place she had run to, when their world came crumbling down, and he was rather looking forward to seeing it, to seeing the life she had built for herself. Besides, Harry was thinking very seriously about coming to join her here in Oxford. Though he loved London, he feared that if he stayed there much longer his determination to leave MI-5 would waver; he needed – _they_ needed – a fresh start. Perhaps they could buy a house, he mused as Ruth led him into her flat; maybe somewhere just outside Oxford, somewhere with a bit of green grass, a bit of garden. Perhaps they could get a dog, he thought as the cats greeted Ruth in an ecstatic display of desperation. Perhaps he could find some other way to fill his time, some way to put his skills to use that did not involve intrigue and lying and death, always the stink, the pall of death hanging over him.

"It's nice," he told her as he gazed around the little flat. It _was_ nice, if somewhat cluttered; light streamed in cheerily through the windows, and everywhere he looked he saw all the little pieces of Ruth that had been missing from his own home for the last two years.

She smiled at his compliment. "It's not bad," she agreed, but then she used the hand still holding his own to draw him to her. "It's better, now that you're here," she murmured, lifting herself up on her tiptoes to kiss him lightly.

This kiss was different from the one they had shared earlier in the day, and different too from the one they'd shared that night in his kitchen. This kiss was warm and soft, gentle and unhurried, familiar and beautiful in its own comforting way. He slung his arms around her, careful not to hold her too close, not to put too much pressure on his still-healing chest. After a week of rest the pain had lessened somewhat, but it would be some time yet before he was back in fighting form. That concerned him somewhat; he wanted, very much, to make love to Ruth, sooner rather than later, but he knew that a bit of creativity might be required in order to stop him doing himself irreparable harm. Though he had a history of acting impulsively he was a consummate tactician, and he was forming a plan in his mind, one which involved getting Ruth in bed and naked as quickly as possible.

Her hands were trailing lightly over his skin; she cupped his face for a moment, held him close to her as she had done that day she left him on the docks, but she did not linger there. Slowly she dragged the tips of her fingers down, over his jawline, following the lines of his throat, the brush of her skin against his own setting him on fire with need of her. For his part Harry simply held her, one hand supporting her at the base of her spine, the other gently kneading her bum, pressing her hard to him. Her body curved in a graceful arch, and though the pressure of her chest straining against his own left him breathless, it was not entirely down to any pain she might have inadvertently caused.

Without knowing where he was going Harry began to walk her backwards through the flat; even in moments such as this, when Harry was ostensibly taking charge of things between them, she was the one who led the way, one of her hands clasping his hip, guiding him towards her bedroom with no need for spoken words. Which was just as well; they were so lost in their kisses that neither of them could spare the breath to speak.

Eventually they stumbled through her doorway, laughing just a little when Ruth neatly tripped over her own feet and collapsed on the bed with a gasp. She was lovely like this, her hair mussed from the touch of his hands, her cheeks flushed red from his kisses, her skirt rucked up around her thighs, her chest heaving from their exertions. She was lovely all the time, but especially now, especially in this moment when they had at last let go of their anger and their grief and their guilt, and consented just to be, just to love, just to live.

"I love you," Harry murmured as he came to stand in front of her. Ruth shifted somewhat, tucking her legs up underneath her, kneeling before him once more. Her hands came to rest on his chest, one of them just above his beating heart; her fingertips curled into him, as if she were trying to reach beneath his skin, trying to fold herself inside of him. It was too late for that, he knew; she had taken up residence inside his heart long ago, and she had never left.

"I know," she replied, looking up at him, her eyes shining in the sunlight streaming in through the curtains on the windows. Those eyes; Harry felt he could very well spend the rest of his life looking into those eyes, and yet never find the words to describe the way she seared him with a single glance. "And I love you. Always."

This time it was Harry's turn to cradle her face in his hands; in this position, with her kneeling on the bed, he had only to tilt her head back, and once again he captured her lips in his own. She came to life beneath him, smiling against his lips, her hands moving, leisurely unbuttoning his shirt, drawing out the moment, savoring it. He let her; in all his many years, no one had ever paid him the kind of attention Ruth did, no one had ever showered him in the sort of gut-wrenching affection she lavished on him at every turn, but then no one had ever known him as she did, his strengths and his failings, his heart and his hopes. When her task was finished he pulled the shirt from his shoulders, and braced himself for her scrutiny.

"Oh, Harry," she sighed, bringing her fingertips to rest ever so gently against the jaundiced bruising on his chest. He didn't bother telling her it wasn't as bad as it looked; it _was_ bad, and he knew it, and he was resolved not to hide from her, not to shy away from telling her the truth, however much it might wound them both. Before he could speak, however, she leaned forward and began to methodically plant kisses across the plane of his chest, her lips gently christening each of the half-healed lacerations, those reminders of the time he'd spent at Anthony Wheeler's hands. As she did he curved himself around her, running his hands from her shoulders down her back and up again, following the sharp ridge of her spine, marveling, not for the first time, at how finely she was made, at the fragility of this creature he worshipped with every fiber of his being. Sometimes he forgot how slight she was, how delicate; she was so slender, his Ruth, small and rather unassuming, but she loomed so large in life, possessed a power and a sheer bloody-mindedness that had made her a goddess in his eyes, a titan of beauty, a paragon of strength. Her bones were small, but they were made of steel, and he loved her for it.

When he could stand it no longer he reached between them and lifted the hem of her blouse in his hands, raising it up and up until he freed her from it; she took a moment, while he was tossing it on the floor, to reach behind and remove her bra herself, discarding it with a relieved little sigh. Still she knelt, her skirt billowing around her, her hands coming to rest gently on his hips, and he drank in the sight of her, memorizing every line and curve of her, burning this image in his mind so that he could recall it at will, all the rest of his days.

This time she was the one to take the initiative, lifting herself up, drawing him to her by his belt loops, kissing him ardently, passionately, unreservedly. Harry gave himself over to her, their tongues dancing and swirling together as he used his size to his advantage and leaned over her, forcing her back and back until she collapsed against the bed, the picture she painted wanton and awe-inspiring in its honesty. He dropped his hands to the mattress on either side of her and bowed his head, taking one of her nipples into his mouth while she sighed in bliss and wrapped her hands around his forearms, canting her hips up towards him invitingly. She _felt_ the same, tasted the same, and he lost himself in the sweetness of her, in her soft lilting sighs and the warmth of her legs, rising up to encircle his waist, pressing his hardness firmly against the soft cleft between her thighs. Still, though every movement of her body drew him nearer the point of no return, he fought to maintain his control, to draw every last drop of pleasure from this moment. He scraped his teeth across her nipple and she moaned, and so he smiled, and did it again.

They could not linger here on the precipice of bliss indefinitely, however, and so while he turned his attentions to her other, as yet neglected, breast he caught her by the hips, dragging her to the edge of the bed so that he could reach behind her and unzip her skirt. She helped him willingly, shimmying out of skirt and knickers alike so that she lay bare and gasping and glorious before him. He had missed her, over the last two years, though not just the way she was now, magnificent in her abandon; he had missed her voice, her counsel, her laugh, had even missed the darkness that haunted her eyes sometimes in the still of the night, that piece of her that not even he could reach, that certain something that belonged to no one but Ruth herself. She was a masterpiece of her own creation, and he felt himself blessed to bask in the glow of her radiance.

"You need to catch up," she breathed, her voice rough with desire. Before he could move she pulled herself upright, planting a kiss in the center of his chest while her hands went to work on relieving him of his trousers. He let her, caressing every inch of her he could reach while she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and focused on the task at hand. She swept his trunks and trousers from his hips at once and he kicked them aside; Ruth took the opportunity to reach out, and wrap her warm hands around his hardness, massaging him gently, drawing a deep, rumbling groan from the depths of his very soul. Though her touch was heavenly, though it rendered him very nearly incapable of thought, he knew he could not give into her so easily; Harry Pearce was a man with a plan.

Carefully he caught her by the wrists, removing the temptation, and she shook him off, throwing her hands out behind her, propping herself up as she gazed at him, her legs splayed open, offering him a tantalizing view of the lush, dark hair between her thighs, and he all but growled as he gazed upon the myriad delights on offer. Though a part of him wanted to drop to his knees before her, to drag his tongue across her folds and make her scream his name, he knew that his body, battered and bruised as it was, was not up to that particular task tonight. Besides, he'd had quite enough of waiting. This time Ruth beat him to the punch; she kept her luminous, ocean-dark eyes on his face, and slipped her hand down her body, over the curve of her breast, across her soft, slightly rounded stomach. He remained spellbound by her, devouring her every contour with eyes while as he watched two of her fingers disappeared into the thatch of curls at her center. _Christ,_ this woman was going to be the death of him.

"Harry," she breathed as she touched herself, throwing her head back, exposing the soft slope of her neck, her hips bucking against her hand until he could bear it no more. He was on her in an instant; he caught her by the hips, and flipped her easily, guiding her with firm hands until she knelt there on the edge of the bed, her head hanging down between her shoulders, her hands fisted on the sheets, her sex glistening and begging him to bury himself inside her. For his part Harry did not hesitate; he stood behind her and, in one smooth thrust, he sheathed himself in the warm wet place he'd been dreaming of since the day she left him.

Ruth threw her head back the moment he began to enter her, her soft, dark hair falling in a tangled wave over one shoulder, his name falling from her lips in a ragged cry. His self-control was shattered, in that moment. All it took, all it had ever taken, to make him lose his self-restraint was the sound of her voice, whiskey-rough and begging for him. With one hand he clutched her hip, and with the other he reached out and caught her shoulder, anchoring her to him as he began to thrust in earnest, drowning in a sea of her.

"Fuck," she swore, the sound more closely resembling a sob than anything else, her whole body trembling and straining as again and again he sought refuge in the warmth and the wet of her. Ruth had the most extensive vocabulary of any person he had ever met, and she never swore, except in bed, except when the fury of their passion sent her tumbling into abandon. It was his fondest wish to make her lose herself so, and he delighted in it. Though it had been his intention to make this last, to sink himself into her slow and steady, to be gentle, he found he could not hold himself back from her. There would be time enough for tenderness later, he told himself; now he wanted only this, only the sanctuary of her body, only the heady, unstoppable release she promised every time she thrust her hips back to meet him. If her mewling cries were anything to go by, Ruth wanted much the same.

He leaned over her, used the hand holding her shoulder to draw her back, her body arching in a bow as he brought his lips down on the shell of her ear, traced the curve of it with the tip of his tongue as he plunged into her again and again. This was the only way he could have managed tonight; he needed to be standing, to keep the pressure off his broken ribs, but even so, he reveled in it. There was something about being behind her like this, about directing her every movement himself, about knowing that she was his, even as he was hers, that spurred him on. He caught the lobe of her ear between her teeth, smiled against her when she gasped.

"I love you," he whispered, his breath ghosting across her skin.

For her part Ruth did not respond; he wasn't entirely sure she could, given the way she was panting, given the way her inner muscles were undulating around him, the inferno they had created between them roaring to a crescendo. He released his grip on her shoulder and she collapsed onto her forearms, thrusting her hips back against him, and he was lost. Once, twice, three times more he buried himself inside her, and then she was moaning, and he was groaning, and they were coming, together.

He wavered for a moment on the edge of collapse, but though his heart thundered in his chest, though his bones felt as if they'd turned to water the moment he emptied himself inside her, though the breath had been stolen from his lungs, he lingered, not wanting to part from her, despite the fact that he knew he must. Eventually, though, the riotous clamoring of his body won out over his sheer willpower, and he sagged onto the bed beside her, gasping and spent. Beside him Ruth was trembling.

Carefully he gathered her into his arms, and she laid her head upon his chest, listening to the steady thrumming of his heart.

" _Jesus_ ," she said finally, when they both regained their breath. Her voice was shaky and somewhat awestruck, and he turned to her, grinning broadly.

"You can call me Harry," he told her cheekily.

"I'd hit you for that, but I don't think I can move my arms," she shot back. She shivered in his embrace, and he ran his hands across the smooth plane of her back in a half-hearted attempt to warm her. Sated, replete, they rested, reveling in the joy and the peace of being once more together, the way they always should have been.

"Will you stay?" she asked him after a time.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and they shuffled around until they were lying on the bed properly, snuggled up beneath the duvet. The feeling had returned to his extremities, and with it came the residual pain from his shattered ribs. He lay on his back, Ruth's head pillowed on his arm, and felt his eyelids begin to droop.

"I'll stay here as long as you like," he murmured sleepily.

"Always," came the reply.

They spoke no more that night.

* * *

 **A/N: I'm not sure if this is the end. It might well be. I think I'll let the chapter percolate over the weekend, and then I'll decide. If it is the end, I'd just like to say, thank you, as ever, for all your kind words of encouragement and support.**


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